We have seen it now - or to be accurate - others are seeing it, but I left the room. Not because it was strong or gruesome, but because it was visibly fake. And fake not only in the sense of having a lot of bad acting (i.e. well scanned supposedly spontaneous takes) or because the speeches felt like adapted stage dialogue, or because the inconsistent (i.e. badly thought out) use of camera styles... though that would all be enough... but because the film did not trust its own sense of truth or outrage at the actual incident (and indeed, why make a film of that?). This is manifest in the lack of faith in the film's performances and images to carry its truth. So, the images are multiplied and underlined and the story is tweaked totally unecessarily to add shade. But this is so clumsily done that we do not read shade, we read UNDERLINING. The 'mistake' at a roadblock where innocent Iraquis are killed cannot just be a tragic mistake (which points out the inevitability of collateral damage in such a laxly policed war, any war) but the driver had to be presented as impetuous, refusing to respond to signals. Iraqis are 50% illiterate, says the film. A justifiable mistake. People... literacy has nothing to do with understanding what an armed roadblock means... the film deliberately presents Iraqis as stupid. A person was killed. the scriptwriter makes that person a pregnant woman. This is very lazy screenwriting. perhaps she should also have been carrying a kitten?
The foreshadowing wears clogs. The script, in general, wears clogs and boxing gloves.
Now, in theory, the rape/murder scene should be exempt from these criticisms because it actually happened. But the film did not have the courage to film the truth of the event. It filmed a curiously bashful version of the events, complete with ellipse of the girl's murder and horribly acted pious accusation by the father. Kubrick had a certain courage in 'Full Metal Jacket' and gaspar Noe did in 'Irreversible'.
De palma's film is only deep in a strict sense of narrative: it describes horrible events. But it does so badly, in the aesthetic sense. But the film sets out to describe true events, or at least a true situation, and it does so lazily, convinced of its own moral authority. Un reflecting on its own stated Film Theory 101, which it works into its own argument (Sal's speechifying about the implications of filming events).
Oh well, another bad war film won't kill us, I suppose.
It was very interesting to me to see how the style(s) of the film immediately negated any sense of its truth. At least a Dogma version would have carried force - or not - depending on what was in front of the camera. here, every element worked against every other element, as in Bresson's warning, any truth in there was nullified by all the falsehood.
Oh, and I didn't like it, either.
If I run back inside, I'll just catch the end.
Feel free to comment.
1 comment:
After the film we all discussed the pros and cons. Most people were hit by the strength of the content - the violence, the duplicity and the suffering, but many also disliked the way the film was made. Larry makes the point, though: which established director is going out on a limb to even talk about these issues in a mainstream film? Despite the flaws in the aesthetics, Larry feels the film was a brave and valid attempt to communicate unheard information. He wonders if the aesthetic position isn't a bit ivory towers-ish. Anyway, what was very good is that no 'party line' emerged. Other comments, I hope will follow.
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