Susan Sarandon Looks Back on "In the Valley of Elah"

Despite her history of activism, Susan Sarandon says she doesn't chase down political films per se -- but that every film she does is political in its own right. "Every film tells you somehow how to be man, or what's funny, or what a system of justice is," she said. "It's only the ones that challenge the status quo that people call political."

For In the Valley of Elah, she thought it would be challenge the status quo by "talking about the damage to the kids that come back" from war, she told Current at her afterparty for her film retrospective at BAM. "No one was talking about that, and you can't do that, and not come back a changed person."

Not only was there a message, but the movie was also based on a true story, the murder of soldier Richard T. Davis in 2003, and the woman that Sarandon played, Davis' mother Remy, was present on the set. "She was there," Sarandon said, "and I felt it was very important to get it right for her. I can empathize with her sacrifice." Accordingly, Sarandon tried to make the most of her brief scenes, in which she had to reach a highly emotional state very quickly. "It was really hard," Sarandon said. "You just do the best you can to get there."

Writer/director Paul Haggis added one scene that wasn't in the original draft, in which her character visits the morgue to see the remnants of her son's remains, once Sarandon came aboard. Sarandon helped tweak the scene by adding a few lines of dialogue, to add some shock and anger to her character Joan's grief. Looking through the window of the morgue, she wonders, "Is that everything? Is that all of him? You must have to keep that room cold. That looks cold." She then asks to go in, but is denied by an army representative (played by Jason Patric). When he says, "My deepest sympathies, ma'am," Sarandon sharply retorts with a line of her own invention, "You don't have a child, do you?" as she walks away. "What he said was completely ridiculous," Sarandon said. "And so they left [my line] in."

"I added a few lines that I suggested here and there," Sarandon said, "and some of them worked, and there were others that were omitted."

One line that Sarandon questioned was the exchange of dialogue between Tommy Lee Jones and her character suggesting that they had another child who had died years before, that both their children were now dead: "Both my boys, Hank. You could have left me one." In the real life case the film was based on, the family had only lost the one child, so "I questioned that," Sarandon said. "I told Paul, 'Maybe that's too much? Do you really need it?'"

In this case, Haggis won the debate, but Sarandon doesn't regret bringing up the issue.

"I don't have answers, but I have questions," she said. "And with really good directors, you can have a conversation about it. When you're directing me, I'm in the back, going, 'Let's go there,' or, 'Let's go here,' but they're the ones getting us to the destination. And people who are confident can entertain suggestions. But if you don't have those conversations, the thing can't find a way to live in the moment."