Word: deerfielders
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...unlikely new 10th-grader arrived on the campus of Deerfield Academy in western Massachusetts. He was Abdullah ibn Hussein, direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad and scion of the Hashemite dynasty, the onetime princes of Mecca and currently the ruling family of the kingdom of Jordan. Now known as His Majesty King Abdullah II, he points to the years spent as a member of the academy's class of 1980 as the most formative of his life. Deerfield introduced Abdullah to a much broader range of friends than is normally available to young Arab princes, and the character-building crucible...
After he ascended to the throne in 1999, the King wanted to bring these values to Jordan. His plan: create the Arab world's first coed boarding school. In 2006 he brought in Deerfield's headmaster, Eric Widmer, and several other Deerfield teachers to kick-start King's Academy, which opened this fall with about 100 students...
...days after returning stateside from a tour of duty in Iraq, a young soldier goes AWOL. His father, Hank Deerfield (Tommy Lee Jones), himself a retired non-commissioned officer, goes in search of him. It soon becomes clear that his son was murdered and dismembered near a military base where he was temporarily reassigned, the chief suspects being four buddies with whom he served overseas. But In the Valley of Elah is not so much a whodunit as a whydunnit, an investigation of why a group of quite ordinary American soldiers would find themselves involved in such a brutal...
...Question asked by In the Valley of Elah (in case you've forgotten, that's where David slew Goliath) is this: What does a war without mercy or justification do to the young men and women who are obliged to fight it? This is not a matter Hank Deerfield has previously ever had to consider. He has served his country unquestioningly and, as important, the movie hints that his belief system, both religious and political, is basically blue-collar, red-state conservatism. But as he investigates his son's death, he begins to see that the young soldier's life...
...needs of soldiers too young for thought to govern appetites, the kind of place where a convenience store clerk cheerfully works topless. Is the movie an analogy of Iraq? Not perfectly, but well enough. Does it say something about contemporary American cheesiness? Yes, to some degree. Does Hank Deerfield's righteousness survive only because he shifts his moral position? Yes, but mutedly, without a jarring triumphant note. This is a sad, subtle and very good movie, designed not so much to make you think, but to make you feel the impact of large events on little lives...