Chris Kyle's Use Of PTSD In The Film 'Alive Day'

In the opening scene of the movie, Chris Kyle identifies a woman handing a grenade to her child. The director, Clint Eastwood, elects to use an interesting combination of filming technique that included a mixture of first person and third person, close-up and medium shots, as well as high and eye level camera angles (Corrigan 2012). The first-person point of view was Kyle’s while he looked down his scope at the woman handing the grenade to the child. This shot was also a close-up and at a high angle to show that Kyle had a much farther and clearer line of sight than the ground forces, and created a mise-en-scène that he was a guardian angel for the ground forces. Whereas, the third person point of view was mainly to show the banter between

He constantly wishes to be alone and he himself says, “there is a fine line between not wanting to wake up and actually wanting to kill yourself, and I discovered you can walk that line for a long while” (Power 2012, pg.135). Bartle also admits to letting himself go and a desire not to talk to anyone, including his family and friends. These symptoms of PTSD are also shown by Private Dexter Pitts in the film, Alive Day, as he says that his friends complain that he acts differently now (Alpert & Kent 2007). However, Pitt explains, that it only makes sense that he acts different now, he talks about how they don’t understand that he had to commit awful acts in order to survive and that these acts haunt him (Alpert & Kent 2007). This is the same for Private Bartle who talks about how he is haunted by what he did over in Iraq and how this has driven him towards a desire to die. However, this was not the only cause of his PTSD the other was the guilt he felt for breaking his promise to Murphy’s

This guilt is not unique to this book and had the chance to present itself in the movie Alive Day as well. In the movie, there is a Staff Sargent who had his legs blown off in an IED. When he was being evacuated out a “kid” under his command comes over and breaks down apologizing that if he had done a better job maybe the Staff Sargent would still have his legs (Alpert & Kent 2007). However, the Staff Sargent, unlike Murphy’s mother, didn’t let someone take on this blame and guilt. He told the soldier under his command that it was alright and to not blame himself. It was because of this forgiveness and the support of his family that the Staff Sargent seemed to overcome his injuries and live his life to the fullest. This makes me wonder that if perhaps Murphy’s mother had never asked Bartle to make that promise, and never blamed him, maybe Bartle wouldn’t have tried to hide Murphy’s death, and perhaps he would have been able to overcome his PTSD. This final theme leads to the final question of whether or not this novel could be made into a good movie, which I believe it could