The Messenger

The directorial debut of Oren Moverman—co-screenwriter of 2007’s sprawling “I’m Not There”— follows two men with a job that no one would envy. As officers of the U.S. Army, they are tasked with the brutal responsibility of informing the next-of-kin of a soldier’s death. In the vein of other recent films like “Stop-Loss,” “The Messenger” is a war movie without combat, a military film focused more on the home front than the frontline. But Moverman’s film moves beyond politics, functioning as a tender meditation on loss rather than a forced lesson about the evils of war.

After returning from combat duty in Iraq with an injured leg and eye, Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) is assigned to casualty notification duty to fill the three months left in his service. He is reluctant to take the assignment, thinking himself unfit to deliver such emotionally delicate news, especially while he is dealing with demons of his own. In the first few scenes, we discover that Montgomery has been recognized for war heroism, the reasons for which remain ambiguous until the movie’s end. We also find out that he’s maintained a close relationship with his ex-girlfriend, Kelly (Jena Malone), who sleeps with him immediately upon his arrival home only to reveal that she’s been considering marrying her new boyfriend. Montgomery is soon paired with a gruff superior named Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson), a recovering alcoholic and serial womanizer who at first glance seems to be a stern, humorless caricature of a military man.

But through this intensely character-driven movie, Montgomery—and the audience—gradually warms to Stone as Harrelson deftly portrays the nuanced and deeply vulnerable character as plagued by feelings of inadequacy and loneliness. The foundation of the film is the development of this cautious friendship between the two men, a relationship marked by regular returns to the same seedy bar. Stone is eager to move past the professional boundaries of his role as Montgomery’s superior, and an ambivalent Montgomery is slowly drawn to Stone’s sincere rambling. Foster plays Montgomery with admirable restraint, highlighting the character’s overwhelming desire to control his own emotions. His silences are imbued with a deep confusion; his eyes communicate a tremendous burden of which he lacks the words to describe. Moverman’s privileging of the rapport between Stone and Montgomery hints at a tragic corollary: war seems to have robbed both men of any meaningful connections apart from their professional relationships even in their hometown.

Despite its intensity, “The Messenger” avoids becoming emotionally manipulative. The reactions of the next-of-kin upon receiving the news are varied, from violent outbursts to calm acceptance. Like Montgomery and Stone, we see these individuals only at their weakest moment, left with a single, striking image. There are no build-ups or resolutions, and, as such, the film rarely slips into facile sentimentalism. Instead, the audience sees only an immediate reaction, captured by a trembling handheld camera as opposed to traditional close-up techniques. Warned against giving hugs and other gesture of comfort, the men can do nothing but stand and watch in stoic rigidity.

Moverman underscores the perpetual untimeliness of death in day-to-day life. The brief and rare use of music is entirely diegetic, stemming only from sources within the scenes, such as a barroom jukebox or a beaten-up car stereo. Montgomery’s first somber exchange with Stone, for example, is set to a cheery Beach Boys tune. The movie also resists the impulse to tailor the style of scenes to their emotional underpinnings; in one scene, a woman discovers that her husband has died on the sunniest, most peaceful of early fall days. With a careful hand in these details, Moverman conveys the characters’ hardest undertaking: recognizing that life blithely continues no matter the magnitude of personal grief. “The Messenger” taps into this message by conveying—wonderfully and unexpectedly—a small sense of humor amid so much desolation. As Stone and Montgomery playfully bicker about whose car to take and who gets to drive, the film reveals both the bitter and the sweet that many war-inspired films tend to miss.

If “The Messenger” has a weakness, it comes at the end, when Montgomery falls in love with a widow named Olivia (Samantha Morton). Morton is powerful as always but Olivia’s plainness is such that we can never quite understand Montgomery’s intense attraction to her, making that storyline fall a bit flat. But this is a minor blip on the face of a memorable force of a film—one that captures emotion without theatricality, humor without insult, and hardship without self-pity. “The Messenger” delivers not just a war movie, but a moving drama in its own right.

—Staff writer Susie Y. Kim can be reached at yedenkim@fas.harvard.edu.