The Men Who Stare at Goats

(Movie Review)

This is a fascinating little movie about the army’s investigation into psychic activities. It is one of those films that immediately sends you running to the internet to try and figure how much of this is true, and how much of this is fiction.

It’s also one of those movies that is interesting in direct proportion to how much of it is true. If it is all true, then it is absolutely amazing. If it is mostly a Hollywood story, then it’s alright, I guess, but I’ve seen better.
The movie opens with the tantalizing line that it is mostly true. Or in their words, “more of this is true than you would believe.”
The rest of the movie often assumes a tone that almost leads you to believe you’re watching a semi-documentary. It’s told through the voice of a reporter, who appears to be documenting everything as he is going, and is mixed in with facts and historical tidbits (for example, citing Reagan’s support of the program).

While watching the movie, I was under the impression that this was more or less a true story (with maybe a couple composite characters and events.)

However after watching the film, my small bit of internet research (I looked at the Wikipedia page) leads me to believe it’s loosely based on a documentary, but mostly made up. I’m not sure.

At any rate, the movie has a rather interesting premise.
About halfway through the movie, a conversation between two generals outlines the reasons for the Army’s investigation into psychic and paranormal activities.

“When did the Soviets begin this type of [psychic] research?”
“Well sir, it looks like they found out about our attempts to telepathically communicate with one of our subs—The Nautilus, while it was under the polar ice cap”
“What attempt?”
“There was no attempt. Seems the story was a French hoax. But the Russians think the story about the story being a French hoax is just a story sir.”
“So they’ve started doing psychic research because they thought we were doing psychic research when in fact we weren’t doing psychic research?”
“Yes sir. But now that they are doing psychic research, we might have to do psychic research, sir. We can’t afford to have the Russians leading the field in the paranormal.”

Absolutely straight out of “Dr. Strangelove.” I was just waiting for them to say something like “we can not afford to have a paranormal gap” and make the allusion complete.

Given that the military designs contingency plans for absolutely everything, and given what a huge amount of pork barrel spending the military is responsible for, I am not surprised at all they were actively researching psychic and paranormal abilities on the off chance it might someday prove useful for military purposes.

What I am surprised at is that, as this film alleges, instead of turning the project over to real researchers to run controlled scientific tests, they gave free reign to new age shamans, hippies, and failed science fiction writers to completely control the project. The result seems to prove the old motto “the truth is always stranger than fiction.” (Again, assuming this is an accurate representation.)

The story is told in two parts. One is flashbacks to the 1980s when the whole program began. A fascinating little piece of history, although a bit dated now.

The other part of the story, the frame part for all the flashbacks, takes place during the current Iraq War, where apparently the psychic and paranormal division was still being employed, running experiments on Iraqi prisoners and torturing them by putting them in a solitary cell with strobe lights and Barney music.

I found the constant switching back between the A story and the B story a bit disorienting. (Just when you’re starting to get into one of the stories, they pull you out of it and throw you into the other.) But no doubt that the film as a whole is one amazing story.
The flashback to the 1980s show a bizarre world in which for a brief time pseudo science was given free rein in the small section of our military. The Iraqi war parts show a bizarre world in which private entrepreneurs are convinced Iraq is going to be a new gold mine of private investment, and private security contractors get into firefights with each other, trapping the hapless locals in between. (Again, the voice-overs, in which Ewan McGregor tells how many casualties resulted from the fire-fight, leads you to believe this was all based on real events. If it turns out this was mostly fiction, I’m going to feel slightly manipulated.)

There’s a pretty stellar cast in this film (Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey, George Clooney) and they all do a great job. Jeff Bridges, who has been a bit typecast as crazy hippy characters ever since “The Big Lebowski”, nevertheless does a great job as a hippy Army commander. Kevin Spacey has a couple great scenes, especially near the end when he’s explaining the new Iraq War psychic operations, and has a fit, throwing pencils at one of his subordinates who brings up an abandoned project.

The ending could have been a bit better. If it’s a true story, then I guess they were stuck with the facts. But if this was largely made up, then I think it could have used a couple re-writes.

Link of the Day
South America: Toward an Alternative Future

The Men Who Stare at Goats: Movie Review (Scripted)