Director Gregor Jordan may have made a movie about war, but he had no idea audiences would actually wage it.
“I was walking up to the stage for a Q&A and I saw this plastic water bottle hit the floor,” he said of his trip to Sundance this year. “Some woman had thrown it from the top balcony, screaming and yelling. I thought it was quite interesting that she waited until the end. I figured, ‘Well, at least she wasn’t bored.’”
Jordan has fallen under intense scrutiny for his latest film, “Buffalo Soldiers,” but has been taking it all in stride. Many military proponents and conservatives have spoken out against the film, claiming it to be anti-American, but the director hopes that audiences will see the bigger picture in the wake of heightened global tension.
“This film is about something beyond politics, like why we want to keep fighting,” he said. “The fact that certain people are getting upset about it now says more about them than it does about the movie.”
“Buffalo Soldiers” is a darkly comic adaptation of Robert O’Connor’s 1993 novel about American military clerk Ray Elwood and his dealings in the German black market in the late 1980s. The self-destructive nature of the characters in the novel appealed to Jordan immediately.
“The first page had this quote by Nietzsche, ‘When there is peace, the war-like man attacks himself,’” he said. “I’d never seen that idea come across in a movie; it kind of goes against the message of a lot of war films or anti-war films. It’s an interesting idea that warfare is somehow innate to human beings and is weirdly necessary.”
The title, “Buffalo Soldiers,” refers to a post-Civil War black cavalry economically coerced into enlistment and ordered to kill southwestern Native American tribes. According to O’Connor, these soldiers were “risking everything they had for something they would never benefit from.” O’Connor’s critical outlook on the American military permeates the book, but Jordan wanted to mitigate this.
“The book was very bleak in its tone, much, much darker than the film,” he said. “In the book, the character of Elwood is a junkie – he kills people, and he hires prostitutes; he’s really a nasty piece of work. I didn’t want to make a film that was that depressing; I wanted a fun kind of contemporary energy to it that was still edgy.”
The film’s edgy, all right; from a massive heroin cookout to vivid acts of fraternal brutality, “Buffalo Soldiers” comes out swinging right from the opening titles. Its detractors accuse the film of disrespecting America and its soldiers. But Jordan does not believe intense patriotism entitles the U.S. military to insulation from the real world.
“American society has areas where drug use and racism and violence are a big problem,” he said. “Why should the military be somehow immune to these problems?”
Miramax has been very careful with “Buffalo Soldiers,” which it bought at the Toronto Film Festival one day before Sept 11, 2001. Two years and several delays later, there is still apprehension over the film’s reception, but Jordan feels that the studio acted appropriately.
“I think Miramax has done the right thing,” he said. “Timing is everything in the release of any film. People just wouldn't be in the right mood for this type of film, because it is confrontational and it forces people to be introspective about themselves as Americans.”
The weeks leading up to its limited release have required much televised introspection on Jordan’s part, and he confesses to being “a bit CNN’d out.” But he hopes the publicity will enlighten audiences, not just cause them to throw plastic bottles.
“You want your film to evoke some sort of reaction,” he said. “That’s what films are meant to do. I guess I’m pleased that it’s provoking a reaction, but I don’t really want to piss anyone off. I set out to make a film that would make people think.”