"Billy Lynn's Halftime Battle" is a Chinese-American director Ang Lee using the latest full film with 120 frames per second, 4K resolution technology to shoot, everything about the war is revealed. I thought the director would use the latest technology to recreate the brutal spectacle of war, but the real war scene is only a clip of Billy Lynn Saving Captain, who is beaten into a red blood mist by the pistol of Point 5, and there are no bones. The director was very restrained and did not have much to reproduce the spectacle of war.
From the events of September 11 in 2001 to the end of the Iraq War in 2011, the hegemony of the United States in the world was gradually challenged. By 2016, when Billy Lynn's Halftime War was released, the United States continued to be mired in the war in Afghanistan, further dragging down the U.S. economy. The American masses do not want to continue fighting.
What the real battlefield is like, outsiders can never understand. In the reporter's question-and-answer session, two gray flashbacks are the real answer in Billy Lynn's heart. The male reporter asked: Have we brought any changes to Iraq? The picture turned gray, and the captain said: "The United States is creating more rebels over there every day." The female reporter asked: What kind of pastimes do you do when you are idle? The picture turned gray, and everyone replied that they thought of women, and there were beautiful women everywhere. The gray picture is what Billy Lynn thinks is the real situation, but what is publicized to the outside world is positive energy, family, democracy, freedom, equality. All information outside the battlefield is modified, showing only the side that is meant to be shown to the masses.
The reasons for the U.S. war in Iraq are widely disputed. Oil tycoon Wayne West believes that the United States is waging the war in Iraq for oil resources. He would extract more oil, reduce America's dependence on foreign oil, and get fighters out of the war and back to their homeland as quickly as possible. But Class B does not approve of the oil tycoons saying so highly about their own profits, and do not want to associate their actions with businessmen and interests. The soldiers of Class B think it is their job to fight in Iraq, that it is their job to take money and do things, that they have nothing to do with politics, that they have nothing to do with interests, that they do what they are told.
For the lower classes of Americans, being a soldier is a good career option. The hero in the film, Billy Lynn, is a low-level white man who is forced to become a soldier to avoid a lawsuit. The waiter wants to go to Iraq as a soldier, but it has nothing to do with fighting, being a soldier is just a job, can earn more salary, and give his family a better life. Billy Lynn and the waiters are all marginal figures in American society, and they have to go outward, seeking the possibility of a future in life.
Is Billy Lynn a hero in Iraq, or a hero on American soil? America is already home to heroes who can't go back. In the film, Billy Lynn could have stayed in the United States for the reason of post-war stress, as the forefront of the War of Resistance in Iraq, born and died, but was humiliated by dancing in the stadium, beaten by workers, and treated as gay, Billy Lynn stayed in the United States and could not see the hope of his future. Billy Lynn and cheerleaders kissed goodbye, and he said emotionally that he really wanted to elope with you, but the girl questioned in a very doubtful tone, you are a hero of the award, you can't think so. Lynn suddenly realizes that she loves Billy Lynn, a bloody soldier on the battlefield, rather than Billy, a second-class soldier who enjoys in the gentle countryside. The hero is only far away in the imagination, not around.
In the United States, which has never experienced war since the founding of the United States, the masses are full of curiosity about the real war experience, especially soldiers like Billy Lynn who have sniped the enemy at close range. Everyone is speculating about the soldiers' battlefield life in Iraq. The owner of the team, Mr. Oglesby, wanted to use the story of the B class to make a movie, but did not want to pay a high cost. Mr. Oglesby wanted to translate the spirit of Class B into the American spirit, but Billy Lynn said that victory over life was real to us, not a spirit of some kind, and rejected Oglesby's insulting price.
Ang Lee does not implant any ideas in the film, but constantly lays out the psychological trauma of the war through details, such as his mother knocking on the table, making Billy Lynn think of the sudden gunshots; and the sudden explosion of fireworks on the side of the stage, so that the soldiers instinctively dodge, because they think the enemy is firing.
Like its predecessors, Billy Lynn is not Hollywood at all, celebrating individual heroism and patriotism, reflecting on the cruelty of war, embedded in the core of anti-war, neither left nor right. The film allows the audience to directly participate in the war through the perspective of a young man, experiencing the psychological trauma of the war on an ordinary young person and the impetuous atmosphere of the whole country, thus satirizing the indifferent attitude of onlookers to the war.