Mendes: US doesn't understand 'Jarhead'

Sam Mendes has suggested that American cinema-goers have failed to understand what his new movie Jarhead is all about.

Based upon Anthony Swofford novel Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles, Mendes' film focuses more on a frivolous take on war which is a very different affair from the one-sided acquisition of glory that he feels audiences expect.

IMDb quote him as saying: "I feel they've understood in Europe. In America, it's like talking about a different movie. Fundamentally, Jarhead disobeys all the laws of American movies, and not just the political laws of American movies right now which demand on some level to tell us which side they're on.

"In Europe, there's a sense this film comes from the tradition of absurdist war movies about the futility of conflict. It has more in common with Beckett, Sartre and Banuel than it does with Oliver Stone.

"In America, they assumed I was trying to make an Oliver Stone movie and that I'd failed."

Jarhead, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard and Jamie Foxx, hits UK screens on January 13.