Eye in the Sky | Little White Lies

Eye in the Sky

15 Apr 2016 / Released: 08 Apr 2016

Words by Clarisse Loughrey

Directed by Gavin Hood

Starring Aaron Paul, Alan Rickman, and Helen Mirren

Woman in military uniform standing at a workbench, speaking on a telephone.
Woman in military uniform standing at a workbench, speaking on a telephone.
2

Anticipation.

To drone or not to drone, that is the question.

3

Enjoyment.

A basic conundrum; yet it’s smart, tense, and surprisingly pointed.

3

In Retrospect.

A last reminder of what made Alan Rickman such a gift to cinema.

Alan Rickman’s final screen out­ing is a text­book exer­cise in bring­ing mod­ern war­fare to the big screen.

Nev­er tell a sol­dier the cost of war.” These are the part­ing words from Alan Rickman’s Lieu­tenant Gen­er­al Frank Ben­son in Gavin Hood’s Eye in the Sky. It’s a role that was to become the actor’s last. It’s cost” we think of now, as we grieve his death. The kind of cost we face when, to become immor­talised on the big screen, we must face our own impermanence.

Movies cre­ate two selves: one human, one untouch­able. Some­times you have to allow the for­mer to fade so the lat­ter may thrive. In this last sight of him, we see those two selves part ways; leav­ing behind one who walks, talks and smiles for an eternity.

Though Eye in the Sky might be con­sid­ered an unre­mark­able frag­ment of his screen lega­cy, Rick­man comes across here as his own essence, like the final refine­ment of all those qual­i­ties which inhab­it his cel­lu­loid self. It’s an explo­ration into the weight of respon­si­bil­i­ty in times of war, and it’s a bur­den that rests so vis­i­bly upon Rickman’s shoulders.

Here, his medi­a­tor Ben­son sits wedged in between Helen Mirren’s force­ful mil­i­tary Colonel and a board of gov­ern­men­tal author­i­ties tasked with the ulti­mate deci­sion: whether or not to order the drone hov­er­ing above an East Kenyan house to drop its pay­load on a gath­er­ing of East Africa’s most want­ed, even though it would spell death for the young girl in the yard next door, her can­dy-striped hula hoop spin­ning grace­ful­ly around her as she plays.

This is war­fare reduced to one basic dilem­ma: do you kill an inno­cent to save the lives of count­less oth­ers? Or do you wait patient­ly for the right moment to reveal itself? As the stakes become clear­er, the ten­sion slow­ly cranks and the sweat pours, as politi­cians stuffed away in a Lon­don cab­i­net room play hot pota­to with the onus of respon­si­bil­i­ty. War will always spill the blood of the inno­cent, but it’s the blood on your own hands that plagues sleep­less nights.

Yet, Benson’s face speaks its own kind of truth. What ele­vates Eye in the Sky above the tor­tu­ous pit­falls of moral didac­tics sits with­in the expres­sion that wash­es over his face as he watch­es those politi­cians ral­ly respon­si­bil­i­ty around the room as if it were a pan­icked game of bad­minton. His fur­rowed brow and heavy sighs betray his weari­ness, his frus­tra­tion. But also a small, wry look of qui­et bemuse­ment. It feels like only Rick­man could meld those wild­ly oppos­ing sen­ti­ments into a sin­gle expres­sion, only he could hold such del­i­cate appre­ci­a­tion that absur­di­ty is nev­er too far behind tragedy. Some­times, even, he seems as if he watch­es the world from a step back, wit­ness­ing and rev­el­ling in all its glo­ri­ous contradictions.

Eye in the Sky is a text­book nar­ra­tive exer­cise. So text­book, in fact, that the old gem of an Aeschy­lus quote opens the film: In war, truth is the first casu­al­ty”. It’s the kind of over­wrought wis­dom that now usu­al­ly graces the load­ing screens of video games. Yet, as Rickman’s droll smirks unroll on screen, we start to see a film slow­ly reveal­ing its hid­den knowl­edge of those strange mechan­ics of existence.

You might like