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There’s a beautiful poeticism innate to PRIVATE BENJAMIN, found within the deeply personal and profound performance put forth by its star and co-producer Goldie Hawn. Its slapstick framework appears threadbare but is anything but, cushioned with anecdotal patches of Hawn’s own experience within the industry. As a pretty comedienne, her talent was routinely dismissed and overlooked by Hollywood contemporaries. Detractors argued her fame was borne only of sex-appeal and circumstance; Hawn, however, knew her worth and capitalized on the public’s ignorance, succeeding Lombard to assume a screwy ‘dumb blonde’ persona hyperbolized to comic effect. She continued to accrue a superstardom that would eventually afford her the perfect opportunity to comically rebuke and then reclaim her narrative, and in 1980 those efforts came to fruition.
Judy (Hawn) in all her JAP glory, preparing to marry Yale (Brooks)
Judy Goodman is no different from the typical Hawn bimbo — she’s a wealthy Jew on her second marriage, materialistic, and hilariously self-involved. She has impossible standards and coasts through life with a superficial glean where money trumps morals. Her only ambition in life is to be a glamorous housewife, causing her to lapse into a depressive identity crisis after she strikes out not one, but two times. She lugubriously laments wasted wedding gifts, far more upset at having to return them than she is over the death of her own husband. When wailing during a live radio broadcast, she learns of a man, Jim, who promises to help. Desperate, she agrees, and discovers upon meeting that he is a recruitment officer for the army. It is here that we truly witness the sexism in full force, and Hawn’s objective framing of both the scene and the dialogue put things into a startling perspective. Judy is irked and suspicious upon arrival, not expecting to be presented with such a “fix.” It’s evident she’s no dummy, and yet, she gets tricked into joining anyway — not because she’s lacking in intelligence, but because Jim plays upon her opulent obsessions and deceives her into thinking that she’ll have her own private suite, promising she can leave at any time. This is not an unreasonable thing to believe, and it’s worth noting that only then is Judy willing to take the bait. If anything, it’s wishful thinking borne of privilege that lands Judy in bootcamp, and not her instinct nor her intellect. If anyone is at fault for her prevailing naivete and entitlement, it’s her parents, who are ten times as unbearable as Judy.
A comedic reprieve acts as a palate cleanser for lighter and fluffier fare, which is maximized in Judy’s initial arrival to the camp. She’s exhausted and clueless, even a bit indignant. Hawn is brilliant here, gesticulating with a hysteria akin to Lombard’s in TWENTIETH CENTURY She flails her limbs like a petulant child, exhausting herself between tantrums and toil as she comes to terms with her gritty new reality. Her superiors leverage her inexperience and obstinance to paint her as stupid and incompetent, exacerbating the judgements of her already unfriendly peers. Her parents arrive not long after with further vitriol, angry that she has left without a word. She’s chastised for her decision to join the army by her elitist father, who explosively calls her “stupid” and “useless” while her mother passively demurs. But the beautiful thing is that Judy is not the acquiescing, meek woman that her mother is, and refuses to be.
Unflinching and emboldened by her father’s resenting disapproval, Judy harnesses her spunk and nerve to ardently tell him off and prove her resilience by staying within the army. Witnessing her father’s behavior forces her to reflect upon her own nature, and consequently works to unlearn her inherited entitlement. Shifting her aim to redirect her focus on resilience and prove her worth, Judy truly starts to blossom for the first time. She befriends her bunkmates, gets fit, and even begins to take enjoyment and pride in her newfound discipline. Intuitive and intelligent, she leads her team to success in a tactical simulation, but her joy is short-lived on account of a spiteful and envious superior officer (played BRILLIANTLY by Eileen Brennan). She’s punished for her intellect and beauty out of envy — but yet, true to form, she perseveres. A kindly superior takes a shine to her and offers her an opportunity to train as an elite paratrooper, which turns out to be nothing more than elaborate ruse to ensure that they can be alone. He attempts to rape her and a distraught Judy jumps to safety. Upon landing, she discovers she’s to be sent away in order to protect the officer’s integrity — once again, forced to mop up the culpability of others who can and will take advantage of a woman.
There’s an entirely unnecessary third and final act that sees Judy, now in Belgium, seek out an old Parisian flame from a one night tryst to have a go at an actual relationship. He’s a prick and philanderer, but she endures this and even leaves the Army to be at his side. The whole set-up feels violently discordant and out of place with the rest of the film. It’s bereft with humor and instead turgid with really tedious melodrama that, if anything, undercuts Judy’s character development until the very final moment. Nothing added was of substance, and even the final scene feels like an insult to her character. After enduring so much doubt from her peers and learning her worth as a woman in society, Judy still regresses to a point where she’s unable to break it off until the very moment the Priest begins to read the vows. Sure, it’s a delight to see her scream out, “Henri, you’re a SCHMUCK,” but the bite just isn’t the same having shuffled through forty minutes of non-substantive drudgery for no good reason. Even in light of that, PRIVATE BENJAMIN is a timeless watch and a fun one at that. It’s rich, inventive, and a momentous personal feat of Hawn’s that allows her to wryly reclaim her narrative and champion her femininity.
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