Tanya Mosley (4:47)

Can you give us an example of this?

Phil Kley (4:50)

Sure. So one of the most contentious areas was when Donald Trump tried to pull American troops out of Syria. We had troops there as part of the counter ISIS campaign. He had decided that campaign was finished. He has always had isolationist instincts, and so he decided we should pull troops out. The military was very concerned, justifiably so, that if we pull troops out, other actors will move in, there'll be chaos and violence. And that is, certainly those fears were justified. And so rather than finding a plan to execute exactly what the commander in chief wanted, they slow rolled the plans. They pushed back as much as they could. At one point, after the fact, Jim Jeffries, who's the State Department special envoy, admitted that they were playing shell games with the White House to not really let them know exactly how many troops we had in Syria. And ultimately they reached a kind of compromise where they kept some troops there to prevent a sort of complete collapse into chaos. And on the one Level, in terms of policy, I'm very sympathetic to that. I have been to refugee camps in northern Iraq. I've met, you know, I've been in a tent with a father. His wife's pregnant. He has two young kids who were at the time the same age as my kids. He's got pins all down his leg because he was injured in a rocket attack and had to flee his home in the wake of the partial withdrawal of American troops. And he felt deeply betrayed. He was Kurdish. He felt that Americans had used the Kurds to fight ISIS and then discarded them when it was no longer necessary. So I'm very sympathetic to the desire to not completely pull out of that region and leave those people to whatever might happen in the aftermath, something that could have undone a lot of the gains of the counter ISIS campaign. And yet, at the same time, it's deeply disturbing when you have a military that, for however understandable reasons, is not fulfilling the orders of the person that the American people elected to tell them what to do.

Tanya Mosley (6:53)

Can you just talk a little bit about the danger of pulling troops from many of the places that we have no understanding or idea where they're holding the line in those places to focus on domestic issues? It's something that you've given a slight blueprint of it happening on smaller scales during the Obama administration. But what Trump is promising, although vague, is pretty substantial.

Phil Kley (7:21)

Here's the thing that I think needs to be said, because Trump's skepticism towards the American footprint abroad and JD Vance's much more personally, because Vance, like me, is a veteran of the global war on terrorism, it doesn't come from nowhere. The skepticism that they have towards these very expansive visions of the American role in the world comes from two very dramatically failed wars that resulted in a lot of death. So, on the one level, I do understand a skepticism towards the American military presence abroad. I understand a skepticism towards the foreign policy establishment that is the author of a series of disasters. Right. And I even understand the skepticism towards grand and lofty rhetoric about what we're doing around the world. And when you look very closely at that, the reality does not always match the idealistic and selfless rhetoric. Right. I understand all of those criticisms. And yet, at the same time, this is a dangerous world. When America leaves places, other actors move in, oftentimes very malign actors. And, you know, the example in Syria is just one. We have nations around the world that are seeking to press at the edges of an international order. Right? You have Russia, which is engaged in a naked land grab in Ukraine. And it's actually extremely important that there are a system of alliances of like minded countries who want to make that sort of behavior as costly as possible without escalating into global conflagration. And that requires engagement, it requires diplomatic finesse. And it's just not enough to say that we can retreat to our borders and the rest of the world can go to hell. That's not realistic. And I think that the American people actually do understand that. They understand that when there's horror and chaos abroad, that that's not just a problem for other people, but that a chaotic world, a more dangerous world, will ultimately be more dangerous for the safety and security of Americans.

Tanya Mosley (10:03)

You know, in thinking about how the situation in Syria was handled during the last Trump administration, I was thinking about his cabinet. And we don't have a clear idea of how he will staff his cabinet, but the last time he was in office, he at least temporarily staffed it with senior generals. He appoint Jim Mattis, a retired four star general, to hit the Pentagon and John Kelly, his chief of staff. Two of his national security advisors were three star generals. Does that in any way offer an indication of who could be informing him this next go round and having a flank of military experts that could be advising him?

Phil Kley (10:44)

You know, I don't think so because all those generals ended up hating him.

Tanya Mosley (10:49)

Yes.

Phil Kley (10:50)

And he seems to have gone in thinking that he was going to appoint generals and somebody with a nickname like Mad Dog Mattis was going to be a ruthless killer who also thought torture was great, rather than a military strategist who was acutely aware of the way that the moral stain of torture made the world more dangerous for Americans and especially for American troops in Iraq. And so I don't think he's going to necessarily appoint the same type of people. And indeed, he, towards the later part of his administration would do these events where he talk to the enlisted and tell them that the generals didn't know what they were doing and he was on the side of the enlisted. And the enlisted he would claim were on the side of him and he would urge them to support his policies. And I would be surprised if that sort of thing didn't continue. But also, there's been an increased politicization of military appointments. Right. You know, you saw that with Tommy Tuberville. Right. Holding up key military posts over policies that the military has no ability to implement. And so I think that this administration is going to be much more careful about what kinds of military leaders they're putting into positions of power. You know, A General Flynn is a very different type of military leader than Mattis or Jones. You know, people who have.

Tanya Mosley (12:29)

In what ways?

Phil Kley (12:31)

I think that you will see much more effort to have partisans in positions of power and a push to have partisans not just at the highest levels, but at lower levels than ever before. Because he was unsatisfied with the people that he had in the past. Right. You know, everybody liked to talk about the adults in the room, but by the end of the first Trump administration, he'd fired the adults in the room. And he's looking for other sorts of people, presumably people who will be more willing to, you know, go with his whimsical.

Tanya Mosley (13:07)

You know, I was also thinking about what could be seen as a potentially simplistic way to look at the military and what is a military person? I was thinking about the things Trump has said in the past, notably about late Senator John McCain. You know, we know that John McCain was a Vietnam War vet who was held captive for over five years in Vietnam, and Trump said that McCain was not a war hero because he allowed himself to be captured. Can you talk a little bit about the harm of that kind of language? Insulting to McCain. Yes. But what messaging did it send to military men and women who serve about the understanding of their sacrifice?

Phil Kley (13:48)

Well, this is one of many comments, I mean, from calling troops that died suckers and losers to, you know, denigrating the Medal of Honor at a ceremony for a donor. I don't think that Trump has a good understanding of a military ethic that prioritizes sacrifice, but also that prioritizes honor. Right. The quintessential military hero is not necessarily the guy who. Who kills a ton of people, though there are plenty of Medal of Honor recipients and recipients of major awards who have killed a lot of people. The quintessential military hero is the guy who jumps on a hand grenade and saves the lives of his buddies. Right. Or in the Iraq war, Marines like Jordan Herter and Jonathan Yale who fired on a truck bomb coming towards their gate, and they died. But because they forced an early detonation, they saved the lives of the Marines behind them. And there's this very important thing that people outside the military might not always get, especially if you're raised on a diet of this very kind of like, aggressive, patriotic militarism, which is all about lethality and killing and cruelty. Right. But actually, a military needs an ethic to function. They need a code to be able to effectively work. I mentioned previously, when we started torturing people in Iraq, it was a Disaster for us militarily, a disaster for us because it inspired contempt and hatred because we were not behaving morally. And inside a unit, you actually need people to behave with honor and integrity and selflessness. For people to be able to trust each other, for a military unit to be able to work right.

Tanya Mosley (15:56)

I mean, like military leaders, as I understand it, kind of see themselves as responsible for the mission and the soldiers. So, for instance, if I was an officer and a mission I led failed, I would take responsibility and hold myself accountable. And that seems to trickle down to everyone to carry that responsibility for the greater good. But Trump, based on many of the things we've seen him do and the things he said, is not built that way.

Phil Kley (16:22)

No, he's not. And I remember in 2016, I actually had the chance to ask him a question at a forum about what his military policy might be or what should have happened in Iraq, and he said, we should have taken the oil. Right. And there's this sense that in the wake of this kind of messianic American exceptionalism that you had under George W. Bush, this retreat to we just have to look out for our interests. If we're going to wage wars, we should have just gotten something out of it, gotten some money out of it. And J.D. vance, who tends to articulate these things with a little bit more finesse in his convention speech, said that he gave, actually, I thought, quite a moving talk about the land where his family is buried. And then he said, that's what people will fight for. People will fight for a homeland, but they won't fight for abstractions. You know, ideals and abstractions are nice, but they're not going to fight for them. And it was one of those moments that saddened me, actually. I mean, first off, it's flatly untrue. People do fight for abstractions. They fight for them all the time.

Tanya Mosley (17:28)

They do fight for ideals.

Phil Kley (17:30)

They do fight for ideals. And I don't think George Washington was lying about the fact that he had principles and that he thought they were worth fighting for. I do think that when Lincoln spoke of a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, and that those ideals were what the men at Gettysburg had died for, and that it was our responsibility to ensure that they had not died in vain, I do not think that was a lie. I think those ideals are deeply important to people. I understand the cynicism. I understand it so well. But if you strip all of the ideals from America, what is the homeland that you're defending? It's just an incredible diminishment of our moral imagination, our sense of ourselves as Americans and what we can be.

Tanya Mosley (18:27)

Phil, you've written quite extensively about this. But what made you join the Marine Corps and what ideals drew you to service?

Phil Kley (18:36)

Service to country was always important in my family or service more generally. My father was in the Peace Corps. My mother was from diplomatic family, actually. My maternal grandfather accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of Henry Kissinger when he was ambassador to Norway at the time, which was a very contentious thing, as you can imagine. And then my mother worked in international medical aid for years. And so I always had this sense that I wanted to serve the country. I originally thought that I was going to go into the State Department and become a diplomat. That's, you know, what I would have told you if you'd asked me when I was in high school. But I went to College September of 2001, and very soon we were at war in Afghanistan, and then we were gearing up for war in Iraq. And it seemed that if I wanted to serve my country, that was the best way to do it, to join the military.

Tanya Mosley (19:30)

Our guest today is writer and Marine Corps veteran Phil Klei. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is FRESH AIR. Hi, this is Molly C.V. nesberg, digital producer at FRESH AIR.

Terry Gross (19:44)

And this is Terry Gross, host of the show.

Tanya Mosley (19:46)

One of the things I do is write the weekly newsletter, and I'm a newsletter fan.

Terry Gross (19:50)

I read it every Saturday after breakfast. The newsletter includes all the week shows, staff recommendations and Molly picks timely highlights from the archive. It's a fun read.

Tanya Mosley (19:59)

It's also the only place where we tell you what, coming up next week, an exclusive.

Terry Gross (20:03)

So subscribe@whyy.org freshair and look for an email from Molly every Saturday morning.

Phil Kley (20:12)

This message comes from Carvana. Carvana makes car selling easy. Enter your license plate or vin. Answer some questions and Carvana will give you a real offer in seconds. Whether you're looking to sell your car right now or whenever feels right. Go to Carvana.com to sell your car the convenient way. This is Ira Glass of this American Life. Each week on our show, we choose a theme, tell different stories on that theme. All right, I'm just going to stop right there. You're listening to an NPR podcast. Chances are you know our show. So instead I'm going to tell you we've just been on a run of really good shows lately, some big, epic, emotional stories and some weird, funny stuff, too. Download us this American life.

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Okay, so does this sound like you.

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You love NPR's podcasts, you wish you.

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Could get more of all your favorite.

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Learn more at plus.NPR.org as we're all.

Tanya Mosley (21:19)

Navigating a divisive election, no matter what happens, the question remains, how the heck are we going to move forward together? So in this season of the StoryCorps podcast from NPR, stories from people who made a choice to confront the conflicts in their own lives head on. And in sharing stories from the bravest among us, maybe we can take their lead and find some hope for the rest of us. Get the StoryCorps podcast wherever you listen. This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tanya Moseley, and my guest today is writer and military veteran Phil Kly. Kley is a graduate of Dartmouth College and served in the Marine Corps in Iraq's Anbar Province as a public affairs officer. He's written several books and short story collections that examine the moral complexities of war, including the story collection Redeployment and Uncertain Ground. His novel Missionaries is about a group of Colombian soldiers preparing to raid a drug lord safe house on the Venezuelan border. He hosts his own podcast called Manifesto. You served in the Marine Corps from 2005 to 2009, and then in 2007, you were deployed to Iraq for 13 months and you were a public affairs officer. Yes. How to be a citizen during war became this moral question for you. It's the basis of your writing. And I can imagine that those questions evolve with every single war.

Phil Kley (22:44)

Yes.

Tanya Mosley (22:45)

How are you reflecting on this moment? You talked about your support of our support of the war in Ukraine. I'd like to know more about our support of the wars in Ukraine, in Gaza in particular.

Phil Kley (22:58)

I mean, I think that we have a responsibility to be engaged in American wars. And actually Ukraine, to me, feels like it's a very straightforward case for support for the Ukrainians. They want to fight. They want our aid. They have been tremendously successful against incredibly difficult odds fighting a much larger nation. And also it's in our interest. Russia has been pushing back against an international order that benefits America, that is important for global security and global peace. And also, I think setting the standard that the international community will not sit by while wars of aggression are going on is very important for the safety of the world writ large. Right. If the world is open to 19th century style land grabs from major nations without much pushback or consequence. That is a recipe for a lot more wars and a lot more danger and a lot more situations that can radically spin out of control. I feel very differently about the Israeli war. I think that especially if you look at the early phase of bombing, you see tremendous civilian casualties throughout the war. You have not seen the Israelis provide for humanitarian relief in Gaza, as you're required to do under international laws of war. There is very clearly both when you look at the sort of overall numbers and also when you look at individual strikes, radically higher tolerance for civilian casualties than we would ever find acceptable when the American military is operating. And there doesn't seem to be much of a plan for long term political settlement that might lead to peace, just sort of endless suppression. And so I think that it is a tremendously morally fraught thing for us to be supporting Israel to the extent that we have, with the limited pushback that we have. I am very concerned that under the Trump administration, you know, I expect less pressure on Israel even than now, which I find insufficient.

Tanya Mosley (25:07)

Can I have you read an excerpt from Uncertain Ground? That's your collection of essays about the relationship between society and the military. You have a chapter called Tales of War and Redemption, and it talks about faith.

Phil Kley (25:23)

A soldier may call out to God while in combat, but the experiences that caused him to do so might be the very ones that later cause him to abandon his faith altogether. What kind of God, after all, would allow any of the innumerable things that happen in a war zone? This old complaint takes on a particular urgency when you've seen children dying slowly after going through more pain than any human being should ever experience. It's not even a complaint unique to war experience. When the writer Alexander Heyman's daughter was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor, he and his wife spent the next few months desperately trying to save her as she was subjected to chemotherapy, brain surgery, and rounds of drug treatments. She died anyway. The experience convinced him that the religious notion of suffering is somehow ennobling was a despicable lie. He later wrote. Isabelle's suffering and death did nothing for her or us or the world. We learned no lessons worth learning. We acquired no experience that could benefit anyone. And Isabelle most certainly did not earn ascension to a better place, as there is no place better for her than at home with her family. Without Isabelle, Terry and I were left with oceans of love we could no longer dispense. We found ourselves within excess of time that we used to devote to her. We had to live in a void that could be filled only by Isabelle. Her indelible absence is now an organ in our bodies whose sole function is a continuous secretion of sorrow. So no, the most intense horrors of the world do not always lead to faith. There are plenty of atheists in foxholes, and some of them are atheists because of what they experienced in foxholes. It would be more accurate to say, as the Vietnam veteran Keith Nightingale has stated, that war leads less to faith than it does to a moment of choosing. Faced with immeasurable human suffering, causing immeasurable human suffering, causing the deaths of other men, experiencing the highest reaches of terror, fighting side by side with men you love so passionately you'd gladly give your life for them, only to see them killed or maimed. All of this raises questions about the nature and purpose of life with an urgency that can't be held at bay by scrolling Twitter or turning on the television. Nightingale writes that the veteran thinks either I have to believe in God who got me through this night, or I cannot believe in a God who would permit what I have just lived through.

Tanya Mosley (27:37)

That was my guest Phil Klei, reading from his 2022 book of essays titled Uncertain Ground. Phil, I want to know where you sit. How did serving in Iraq impact your faith?

Phil Kley (27:57)

It's funny, I mean, I had a very safe deployment, right? And also during a time when violence went tremendously down. So I left Iraq feeling like we succeeded, feeling like if you had the right strategy and the right metrics and data about, you know, human beings and different policies, you know, that you could solve things. I was very confident in human beings ability to master the world in which they lived. And I gave up on faith. And there was a time when I would have considered myself an atheist. And then as I began writing my first book and thinking very deeply about the war that I had been a part of and about the strategy that I had sort of felt so smugly triumphant about. And also as Iraq was unraveling and the places that I had been through were going through yet another round of unbearable violence and suffering, I started going back to church, less from a place of firm certainty in human mastery and more in a sense of helplessness, a feeling of awe and horror at the mystery of the world.

Tanya Mosley (29:34)

What have other veterans shared with you about finding their faith amidst, or maybe because of the horrors of war?

Phil Kley (29:44)

There's a a veteran I know named Peter Lussier who has been involved in immigration issues, refugee issues, has been deeply involved in trying to get Afghans out of Afghanistan. People who worked with us whose lives were in danger. And he's part of a community of people who have really taken this on, atheists, believers and so on. And one of the people that he worked with said, you know, I'm trying to come up with a prayer to the Virgin Mary because I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do to help the people. And facing just government dysfunction, extreme need and human suffering. And he came up with a prayer for refugees based on Hail Holy Queen. And he talked to me about this sort of Catholic tradition of just kind of facing suffering, suffering that might not necessarily be resolved and might not be be resolved by the prayer that you're praying. You know, there are prayers. This 88th Psalm, which is a psalm which has almost no hope in it, doesn't have any hope in it, and yet it's still a prayer.

Tanya Mosley (30:55)

Can you recite it?

Phil Kley (30:58)

It's a remarkable psalm, and I've always been deeply moved by it, just as I'm moved by Christ on the cross saying, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Right? Which is something that sounds like despair, and yet it is a quotation of the Psalms, and yet it is a prayer. And thus something hopeful, but a hope that can't even articulate itself as hope because the situation is so dire. And I have always been moved by those passages of the Bible, by those sorts of prayers. Because if you spend a lot of time thinking about war, prayer will not save you. Being good will not necessarily save you. War kills the innocent and the good and the just as well as the wicked. And you need a religious experience and language to be able to articulate those moments. This is the end of the 88th Psalm. From my youth, I've suffered and been close to death. I've borne your terrors and am in despair. Your wrath has swept over me. Your terrors have destroyed me all day long. They surround me like a flood. They have completely engulfed me. You have taken from me friend and neighbor. Darkness is my closest friend. And I think that one of the things that that style of religious engagement offers is the ability to still pray when you can't even articulate a vision of what you hope for and what you want to have. Faith will come before you, and that allows you to keep moving.

Tanya Mosley (32:55)

Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is writer and Marine Corps veteran Phil Kley will continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH air. If you listen on the regular to the Fresh Air podcast, then I know you'll love some of the other NPR podcasts, too. Here's why NPR is worth your time and money. You get perks like sponsor free listening, bonus episodes, early access shop discounts and more for over 20 different NPR podcasts like this one. Support what you love and stop hearing promos like this one@plus.npr.org Read about the impact of women in music with NPR's new book, How Women Made a Revolutionary History from NPR Music. This stunning anthology offers original writing and illustrations, interviews and photos, and the audiobook includes 52 years worth of interview excerpts with more than 60 legendary artists. Visit npr.org how women made music to order now. Joe Biden's on his way out. Donald Trump's on his way back. Want to know what's happening as the presidential transition is underway? The NPR Politics Podcast has you covered with the latest news and analysis. Listen to the NPR Politics Podcast. This is FRESH air. And today I'm talking to Phil Kley, Marine Corps veteran and winner of the national book Award in 2014. You know, so much of our imagination around what happens in combat comes from war films. And I'm just wondering if there are any films that you respect that you feel like have done a good job at exploring these difficult moral choices that people in the military confront.

Phil Kley (34:38)

You know, it's funny because there are films that Marines love. Like Full Metal Jacket is one that, you know, if you talk to a movie critic, they'll tell you it's an anti war film. Well, Marines love it. And Arlie Ermey was given an offer, honorary promotion to gunnery sergeant for all that he had done for the Corps. And there are films that express certain things that, you know, if you're like a film critic, you might think, oh, this is terrible. And if you're, you know, 20 year old of the sort who might join the Marine Corps, you look at it and you say, all right, that's what I want to be Joker, you know, from Full Metal Jacket. There are a lot of films that get at different corners of military experience and that maybe I wouldn't necessarily endorse in their hole, but nonetheless do show you something powerful, Right? Veterans love to knock the Hurt Locker for many justifiable reasons, and there are all sorts of crazy stuff that happens in it. But there are moments that really do get a sense of like, you know, driving through an Iraqi town looking like an alien because you're covered in protective gear and sort of normal people on the street looking at you like you're an alien. And actually the other film that I had More problems with, in terms of the way that it depicted torture in its role. Zero Dark Thirty at the very end, when the seals kill bin Laden reminded me of a line from a Kenneth Koch poem to World War II where he says, as machines make ice, we made dead enemy soldiers. And that kind of like, oddly, almost industrial process, you know, the way in which warfare is a part of, you know, it's like a unit and it's a collective action. And that final scene actually did kind of oddly, in the almost sort of coldness and impersonality of how it was conveyed, did get at some of that.

Tanya Mosley (36:30)

I'm really reflecting and sitting on the way you've characterized this new chapter that we're stepping into. Your fears about the shrinking of the moral horizon under a Trump administration and the idea of patriotism, which you say should not be about blind allegiance, but interrogating what we believe and having tough conversations and holding our leaders accountable. Do you have fears that we have lost sight of that idea?

Phil Kley (37:00)

I think that there is far too much cynicism in our politics, and hopefully that cynicism in our politics doesn't bleed over too much into cynicism about our relationships with our fellow Americans of whatever political persuasion. I think that a certain amount of distrust is good. I think that cynicism is always false comfort. Right. And despair is false comfort. The work of being an American is work. There was a, you know, I was talking with a veteran, a military veteran named Ben Warmington about, you know, he was working on trying to get this Iraqi interpreter that he worked with a visa to, you know, come to America. And he's been involved in refugee resettlement as well. And he said to me, he said, being an American is like being a Christian. If you don't put into practice, you don't believe. Right. And I think that there's this way in which, for me, I had a much more naive idealism probably when I was. Certainly when I was 20, when I was 21, when I was joining the military and going overseas. And in many ways, that sense of America has been really changed. But the overriding love for the country and belief in what the country can be and love for American citizens has not changed. You know, there's a. In Derek Walcott's Nobel speech, he said, break a vase. And the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than the love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole. And I think that the job of being an American is recognizing all the times that we have shattered those ideals that we say recognizing all the times that we have so grievously fallen from what we can be, and then very carefully and painstakingly trying to put those pieces back together.

Tanya Mosley (39:16)

What does it mean right now to support our troops, to truly support those who serve?

Phil Kley (39:23)

Taking American wars seriously, paying attention, demanding more transparency about American wars, demanding more oversight, not accepting a partisan politicization of the military, punishing elected leaders who try to do that is, I think, actually really important, and maintaining skepticism and engagement, but not pure cynicism.

Tanya Mosley (39:56)

What is your relationship to Veterans Day and how will you be observing it?

Phil Kley (40:03)

Well, I'll take my children to the parade. I will talk to them about service. They're young, so I'm not going to tell them everything that's in my books. But they know that I write about it. They know that I have respect for service of all types to the country, and that I think that we all have an obligation to think about war, to think about how we're using the military, and also to always be praying for peace.

Tanya Mosley (40:36)

Phil Clyde, thank you so much for this conversation.

Phil Kley (40:39)

Thank you.

Tanya Mosley (40:41)

Phil Kly, Marine Corps veteran and author of Redeployment and Uncertain Ground. Coming up, critic at large John Powers reviews the new movie musical Amelia Perez. This is FRESH air. The Code Switch team spent Election Day talking to folks about how the outcome might impact them. It's a time capsule of people's hopes and fears before they knew the results.

Phil Kley (41:04)

One way or another, there's a change coming. I wanted to vote for Trump, but I voted for her.

Tanya Mosley (41:09)

Gays for Trump. I cried this morning.

Phil Kley (41:11)

I've been crying on and off. I'm terrified.

Tanya Mosley (41:14)

Listen to Code Switch, the podcast about race and identity from NPR. Hey, everyone. I'm B.A. parker, a host of the podcast Code Switch. And on my show, I get to dig into all of the facets of being a black woman, from honoring my ancestors to exploring representation in reality tv. Code Switch is a place where I think out loud about how race and identity are connected. Join me on the Code Switch podcast from npr.

Phil Kley (41:43)

If you need a moment to catch your breath and calm your nerves, listen to the latest All Songs Considered from NPR Music. We've got an all new mix of songs to slow the blood and recalibrate your day, plus reflections on gratitude, joy and the power of kindness. Listen to new episodes of All Songs CONSIDERED every Tuesday, wherever you get podcasts.

Tanya Mosley (42:06)

This is FRESH air. The new movie musical Emilia Perez tells the story of a Mexican cartel boss who undergoes gender affirmation surgery and becomes a woman. The film, which is currently in selected theaters will start streaming on Netflix on November 13, and it won two big prizes at Cannes, including a shared best actress award for its four women leads. Our critic at large John Power says it's daring and fun and promises that you'll never have seen a movie quite like it.

Terry Gross (42:38)

Whenever I hear the words movie musical, I think of upbeat crowd pleasers like Singin in the Rain or My Fair lady, with west side Story and Oliver at the darker end of the spectrum. Yet we're deep into an era that keeps pushing the musical into ever weirder and murkier territory, from Leos Carax's Annette, where a standup comic murders his opera singer wife, to Joshua Oppenheimer's upcoming the End, a tale about the last family on Earth. Heck, even the joyless Joker sequel is filled with singing. None of these musicals is any wilder than Emilia Perez, the latest effort from Jacques Odiar, the terrific French writer director who's always trying something new. Shot mainly in Spanish on a soundstage Mexico City, this stylish new movie centers on four different women. It drops them into a genre bending, gender bending plot that includes kidnapping, mass graves, sex reassignment clinics, fiery deaths and a processional finale that borders on sanctification. If you can guess where it's headed, you're smarter than me. An inspired Zoe Saldana plays Rita Moro Castro, a brainy Mexico City attorney stuck working behind the scenes for a lazy lawyer who gets rich men off after they kill their wives. Her future looks dim until a drug lord, Manitas del Monte, offers her a deal. He'll make her rich if she'll help him realize his lifelong dream to become a woman, then help him disappear and set up a whole new life. When they meet again four years later in London, the once scruffy Manitas has been happily reborn as stylish Emilia Perez. Both are wonderfully played by the Spanish born trans actress Carla Sofia Gascon. Although her identity has changed, Emilia can't abandon all of her old life. She wants to be with the children she fathered back in Mexico with Manita's young wife Jesse, a lost soul played by Selena Gomez. Again, Rita sets things up. Then she helps Amelia start to atone for her past by creating an NGO for victims of Mexico's bloody narco trade. It's here that Emilia falls in love with Epiphania, nicely played by Adriana Paz, the widow of a murdered man. Now, as it leapfrogs between contradictory emotional registers, Emilia Perez is a bumpy, freewheeling ride with 16 songs by the famous French singer Camille and composer Clement Ducau. These range from small, sentimental tunes to big, overtly political numbers about the machismo and corruption of Mexico's ruling elite. Although their music is good, I do wonder how Mexicans will react to seeing the horrific violence of its drug wars folded into a musical about a narco changing his gender identity. After all, it's one thing for Sweeney Todd to wring dark laughter from making human meat pies in Victorian London, quite another to have people singing and dancing in a present day Mexico where tens of thousands of people have been murdered, especially when it's still happening. Then again, musicals are about creative freedom. Not only do they specialize in the lyrical pleasures of music and color and movement, they are so unabashedly stylized that the rules of realism don't apply. We're obviously in the realm of fables. We accept that Amelia's transition is a painless rebirth, that she has shaken off most of the ruthlessness that made her a drug baron and has become someone new and better. Of course, even fairy tales needs something human to hold on to. What tethers us is the quartet of female stars, with Saldana and Gomez doing show stopping numbers and Paz anchoring her scenes in down to Earth emotion. Although Saldana has never been better, the movie finally belongs to Gascogne. Knowing this story from the inside, she gives Emilia and the yearning Manetis a gravity and conflicted complexity the story doesn't always earn. Although telling a trans story might strike some as a bit trendy, Odiard's movies have always been fascinated by huge personal transformations for good or ill, be it the sales clerk in a self made hero who reinvents himself by passing as a French Resistance stalwart or Marion Cotillard's orca trainer in Rust and Bone who learns to live again after losing her legs in Emilia Perez. Odiard suggests that Emilia's liberation from her male body has freed her to be kind and generous. Yet the film also has a political point to make. For Amelia to be truly free of her past. It's not enough to simply find inner peace in being a woman. She needs to change the wounded Mexico around her as much as she's changed herself.

Tanya Mosley (47:46)

John Powers reviewed the new movie Emilia Perez on tomorrow's show. Stress can make you itchy, so you may have been doing a lot of scratching over the last few months. We'll talk about what researchers are learning about the causes of mattning itch and new ways of treating it with Annie Lowry. Her Atlantic article is about that research and dealing with her own severe itch. I hope you can join us.

Phil Kley (49:12)

Get off. Get it real me. Smile.

Tanya Mosley (49:17)

Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producers are Molly CV Nesper and Sabrina Siewert. Roberta Shorok directs the show with Terry Gross. I'm Tonya Mosley.

Phil Kley (49:42)

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