Jason Bourne and America’s Spiritual Crisis

Near the conclusion of The Bourne Identity (2002), we find our hero, Jason Bourne (Matt Damon), taking refuge in a country farmhouse belonging to Eamon, the ex-boyfriend of Bourne’s hostage/lover/sexy barber Marie (Franke Potente). Bourne’s shadowy employers have dispatched a rival Treadstone assassin – known only as The Professor (Clive Owen) – to eliminate the threat posed by their malfunctioning asset. When Eamon’s son notices the family dog has gone missing, Bourne (preternaturally perceptive, as always) recognizes the portent. Sending the innocents to safety in the cellar, he takes to the field with only his wits and a break-open shotgun. One exploded propane tank and a flock of birds later, The Professor is at Bourne’s feet, disarmed and bleeding to death from two barrels worth of buckshot. “Look at us,” he tells Bourne, “Look at what they make you give.”

It is this admonition which frames the subtextual question posed by the Bourne films; what parts of our spiritually identity are we forced to sacrifice when we place our conscience on the altar of a cause? Though other aspects of the trilogy function in the same way, it is this scene which most poignantly illustrates the filmmakers’ statement. The United States have been embroiled in foreign conflict for much of its history, and indeed throughout the production of the entire Bourne series. The ethical questions raised by the Bourne films have profound meaning given the seemingly endless cycle of violence being enacted by Americans throughout the world. The issues confronted in this particular reading of the films make sense given the socio-political context at the time their production, but the issues are no less pertinent today.

We Have Met The Enemy, And He Is Us

To understand how the Bourne films confront this question, it’s important to first compare them to similar genre pieces. Take, for example, the Daniel Craig-era James Bond films. The modern Bond is darker and more violent than his debonair predecessors, but his conflict remains primarily a nationalistic one. Our new Bond can now brood and question his purpose, but in the end, he functions as a tool of the Crown – foiling plots, dispatching various foreigners and bringing down some threat to the Kingdom.

In the Bourne films, these conventions are almost entirely ignored. There is no nuclear missile countdown or secret codes housed in a steel briefcase; there’s simply Jason Bourne, defending his life and trying to piece together the broken shards of his identity. The antagonistic forces in the film are not foreign armies or external threats to the United States, but heartless bureaucrats keen to justify the programs they administer. This shift in narrative focus is unusual for spy/war films, and it leads viewers to think about their preconceptions about those who perpetrate violence on behalf of the United States, and what such violence does to America’s national identity.

A critique of the American warmaking machine is inherent in the plot of The Bourne Identity. The story of the first film unfolds in a non-linear fashion, with the amnesiac Jason Bourne trying to piece together his memories after being pulled from the ocean by a passing fishing boot. In the context of the story though, Bourne’s character arc begins before these events, with the botched assassination attempt that lead to his waterlogged predicament. Master assassin Jason Bourne – the pride and joy of a US government black-ops project called Treadstone – sneaks onto the yacht of deposed dictator Nykwana Wombosi (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje).

It’s important to note the justification for the assassination – Treadstone is targeting Wombosi not because he poses a physical threat to American or even his own nation, but because he’s a threat to the public image of the CIA. Wombosi threatens to expose information about American governmental involvement in Africa, and in doing so, makes himself a target. Again, the message is reinforced: we should not surrender our conscience to institutions that consider murder a mere public relations tool.

Given his prodigious sneaky talents, Bourne manages to board the yacht undetected and locate Wombosi within the darkened vessel. He places his silenced pistol against Wombosi’s head, ready to add a notch to his kill tally, when Wombosi leans back. As Bourne and Wombosi make eye contact, we see one of the dictator’s children resting serenely against his chest. His extreme programming notwithstanding, Bourne recoils at the thought of killing a man in the presence of his children. This moment of hesitation is all Wombosi needs to retrieve his own pistol and put two rounds into Bourne, dump him into the moonlit sea, and leave him for dead.

Treadstone discovers that Bourne is alive and on the loose, and decide that he needs to be ‘brought in.’ When it becomes clear that Bourne’s programming can no longer be reset, he becomes another assassination target. Treadstone’s pursuit of Bourne is what drives much of the action in the first film, but it also underpins an important thematic element. Bourne belongs to a system that not only asks him to surrender his humanity for the sake of a morally malnourished cause, but actively punishes him for a moment of compassion. A soldier who thinks and feels is one who cannot be controlled. Bourne is betrayed by the very people who created him because of his failure to abandon his own humanity.

License to Feel

In addition to critiquing the institutions which require these spiritual and moral sacrifices, the Bourne films focus on the personal cost of the men and women at the business end of said institutions. The death of the Professor provides a salient example of this focus. Absent from this moment are the dogmatic death throes of the typical villain.  The Professor does not defend the mission or leave the hero with some parting vitriol. Instead, he uses his final moments to simply connect with another human being. “Do you get the headaches?” the Professor asks Bourne. “I get such bad headaches.”

The Professor isn’t any different than Bourne. Despite their exceptional abilities, they are essentially soldiers – lonely, deadly men, enacting the conflicts of their faceless superiors without ever understanding why. Here,  director Paul Greengrass pairs a systematic issue – the detachment of the political machinery which constructs wars – with a personal one: the damaging effects of violence on those whose duty it is to perpetuate it. The decision to fight wars is made in air-conditioned offices and across boardroom tables, hundreds of miles from the blood and struggle of the men on the ground. It is the soldier who bears the weight of the war – he is separated from other people, starved of human connection in order to maintain his fighting edge. To become a killer is to surrender empathy, and that’s exactly how the establishment wants it.

Bourne’s constant struggle to regain his memories and reconstruct his identity illuminates the message further. When we first meet Bourne, he’s suffering from profound amnesia following his scrape with death after the failed Wombosi hit. Bourne’s amnesia, and that of the other state-sponsored assassins he squares off against over the course of the trilogy, is more than just a necessary result of their unique and brutal indoctrination: it represents the sacrifice of identity the game of war requires of its players, be they individuals or nations. A certain degree of amnesia is necessary for Treadstone, and other institutions like it, to exist. Once an asset donates his own identity to the cause, it becomes easier for him to see others as targets.

Conclusion

Bourne’s development highlights this idea as he progresses toward his own completion. He begins the trilogy as a killer without memory, and is only able to reconstruct himself when he acts out of personal conscience and compassion. By the end of his arc, after reconstructing his complete identity, Bourne no longer needs to kill. The message is clear – the urge for violence is tempered by a clear sense of identity; when we see the humanity in ourselves, we can comprehend the humanity in others – this truth speaks to us as individuals, but can also help inform the function of our governments. When we opt in to the violent causes of faceless institutions, we run the risk of forgetting who we are, of becoming the playthings of dark puppeteers. Even if our cause is noble, we endanger our souls when we hand control of our conscience over to institutions.

Though embracing many of the tropes that make the spy genre popular, the Bourne films provide a profound subtextual message and a harsh critique of American international policy: in order to prevent spiritual and societal crisis, America must rebuild an identity of human empathy and moral rectitude free from the demands of the war complex.

What are your thoughts on the social commentary in the action genre? Let us know below!

(top image: The Bourne Identity (2002) – source: Universal Pictures)