“Thank You for Your Service.” features Miles Teller.
In his 2013 book “Thank You for Your Service,” about American soldiers struggling to reintegrate into civilian life after returning home from the front lines in Iraq, Washington Post reporter David Finkel wrote that “every war has its after-war.” He followed soldiers who leave combat behind and return to welcoming hugs and balloons on their hometown tarmac, only to resume a very different kind of battle — against pernicious invisible enemies in the form of the psychological and emotional anguish that afflicts so many of our veterans.
The new movie “Thank You for Your Service,” opening in the Bay Area on Friday, Oct. 27, brings the personal dimensions of the “after-war” to life. Written and directed by Jason Hall, the Academy Award-nominated screenwriter of “American Sniper,” the new film is based in part on Finkel’s reporting on the post-combat lives of the soldiers from the Army’s 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment he followed when they returned to Kansas in 2007.
Miles Teller (“Bleed for This,” “Whiplash”) plays Sgt. Adam Schumann, a spotter of improvised explosive devices, who completed three tours to Iraq and 1,000 days of combat with his body intact, but his mind racked by guilt over a disabled comrade (played by Scott Haze) who survived a sniper’s bullet to the head.
Schumann’s wife, played by Haley Bennett (“The Girl on the Train”), can tell her husband is suffering, but can’t get him to talk. Schumann and his braininjured war buddy, played by Beulah Koale (“The Last Saint”), spend hours drinking and hunting, finally enduring the overtaxed Department of Veterans Affairs hospital’s interminable intake waits, only to be told, “There is no cure for trauma.” They hear about Pathway Home, a rehab center for veterans in the Napa Valley’s Yountville, which becomes a beacon of hope throughout the movie.
“You can read all about PTSD and read statistics about war and trauma and the veteran suicide crisis (20 self-inflicted deaths per day in 2014), but we were really trying to humanize these guys,” Teller said by phone from Los Angeles. “Hopefully, this movie awakens people in a way art can, but numbers don’t, to what’s really affecting our countrymen and women returning from war, and that we have a responsibility as a country to do more.”
Teller, 30, said he was drawn to the role of Sgt. Schumann in part because of the glaring discrepan--
cy between how technically skilled we’ve become at fighting wars and our lagging abilities and willingness to treat and comfort our veterans.
“Even Abraham Lincoln came up with the term ‘soldier’s heart’ because he could tell these guys were coming back from (the Civil War) messed up,” said Teller. He has numerous childhood friends from Citrus County, Fla., in the military, “as well as a grandfather, uncle and great-uncle who served. It’s in my blood line.
“The terms keeps evolving, and we know guys’ brains are biologically different after they get back from war, but we don’t always remember that when a guy’s out of uniform and back to making pancakes for his kids, looking for a job and trying to move on, that trauma is with him for the rest of his life.”
Teller’s acting skills were first recognized in 2010’s “Rabbit Hole” with Nicole Kidman, another movie, he said, “about PTSD, something I feel pretty strongly about. I played a kid who was dealing with immense trauma, and that was something I could relate to.”
Just a year before landing the breakout role, Teller was in a high-speed car crash on his way home with college friends from a jam-band festival in Connecticut. He was thrown 30 feet from the vehicle, and survived with only the faint scars that now line the left side of his face and torso. A year after his own accident, he lost two friends to separate car accidents, five weeks apart.
Teller said having overcome his own traumas “definitely brought me closer to Adam” when he initially met him during preproduction in North Dakota. “Just as a human being relating to him, I felt we had some things in common.”
“Acting Adam’s experiences was very daunting to me, maybe more so because of the amount of respect I have,” Teller said. “I know from buddies the sacrifices they make to wear that uniform, how much pride they take in it, so it wasn’t something I took lightly.
“It would have been really tough if Adam was really guarded about his experiences, but he was an open book. I think he realized that by sharing his story, he could help a lot of people.”
Jessica Zack is a freelance writer who frequently covers art and film for The San Francisco Chronicle. Twitter: @jwzack