Friday, October 19, 2007

London Film Fest Day 3 - REDACTED - unexpectedly brilliant

After the fiasco that was THE BLACK DAHLIA, I wasn't anticipating much from Brian de Palma's latest flick, REDACTED. The movie is a fictional re-telling of the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl by two US soldiers stationed outside Samarra. As the title suggests, de Palma tells the story by combining a number of fictional sources - from a home DV by one of the soldiers to Iraqi news footage to Jihadi websites. In an of embedded journalists and partisan news coverage it's admirable that someone should try and give us a stripped away look at the reality of the US occupation. The location work certainly rings true. But for the first 30 minutes I couldn't get into the film because the characters were like caricatures. They were so pig-ignorant, vulgar and immoral that I couldn't believe that they actually represented real people. In fact, it plays a bit like a cartoon. The lead aggressors are actually very funny in a sort of tooled-up Beavis and Butthead kind of a way. But the film improves. De Palma has a lot to say about how far the media can convey "the truth" and how far journalists and film-makers exploit reality and are complicit in the acts they cover. He shows us in graphic detail what happens when a soldier steps on a land-mine and what happens when an Iraqi car drives too quickly toward a check-point. Finally he shows us what happens when immoral sadistic soldiers take their "spoils of war". At the end, de Palma pulls the rug from under us. He shows the actual news footage of the "collateral damage" that the film has portrayed in fiction. You realise just how close the movie is, in its consequences at least, to the Iraqi occupation. As I left the cinema, some of the audience members were in tears.

No doubt, de Palma will catch a lot of flack for depicting the US army in such a bad light. He seems to be saying that the rape and murder of the young girl was the logical consequence of a war in which young kids with no clear moral sense have been thrown into a war with no clear outcome and carte blanche. These kids know that if they shoot to kill at a checkpoint no-one will prosecute them. They can use the catch-all excuse - they suspected insurgents. In a regime where the fourth estate has been co-opted by a kleptocracy, all bets are off.

REDACTED played Venice, Toronto and London 2007 and goes on release in the US on November 16th 2007 and in the UK on March 7th 2008.


  1. I saw this movie at the New York Film Festival. As a budding filmmaker myself I was enthused to hear DePalma say that it took him over 30 years to get in the Festival. As for the film - it was ugly - beautiful - passionate and painful. It's essential viewing. This style I would assume requires some real chops for the actors. I spoke with Ty Jones (in person so charming and affable with a 1000 watt smile - equally matched with potent intensity on film) and Patrick Carroll (one of the most haunting performances I've seen in some time). They told me they would have to shoot sometimes 15 pages in one shot. From my experience in film this kind of 'shooting' tells me how extraordinary these actors were. Essentially they had to be so present and flawless because they couldn't be hidden by 'editing'. The best film actors can almost always rely on editing to 'cover' them. The guys were out there as vulnerable dare I say as the actual soldiers themselves. - Marie Kennedy, NYC

  2. Hi Marie, thanks for your technical input! The movie is "essential" viewing. I am somewhat surprised to see such negative critical reaction to it.....

  3. Remember "The Untouchables", another DePalma movie, in the scene at the train station where the baby carriage was going down the stairs? In that film, it was a heavy-handed symbol of the extreme danger and moral courage of the good guys, saving the helpless baby. It worked in that movie because the whole movie was infused with a bit of corniness. "Redacted", however, also relies on the corny "women and children in peril" attitude that DePalma seems obsessed with. From the pregnant war victim to the montage at the end, the movie was blatant in it's message that women and children are the ultimate victims of the American Jingoist aggression. Now... I agree with anti-war sentiment. I believe it's an illegal and immoral war. But DePalma seems to confuse those who serve in the military with those who got us into this war. He's like one of the hippies that spit on the Viet Nam vets. Just like the WMD lie was used to sell the war, it seems like DePalma is using a gross exaggeration of events, mixed with his own warped opinion and perception of soldiers, to make an argument against the war. And it's just as morally reprehensible.

  4. @Anonymous.

    You seem to make 2 points. First, BDP uses a "corny woman and children in peril" storyline. Second, that he confuses leaders with soldiers.

    On the first, BDP may have used this motif egregiously in the past, but should that preclude him from using it here in a story that actually justifies its use? Many film-makers revisit the same stories, subjects, motifs.

    On the second, you make a valid point that we should not confuse the lions for the lambs. But then, we should not be shy about pointing out the excesses of the minority who give the majority of soldiers a bad name. I think you under-estimate the audience. I think Abu Ghraib was horrific and those US soldiers involved were criminal. It does not follow that I think all or even most US soldiers are immoral. Neither does it follow from REDACTED that BDP thinks all US soldiers are gung-ho, ultra-violent nut-jobs.

    I think you should give BDP and the audience a lot more credit.

  5. Bina007,
    You and I must have taken different messages from the movie. Redacted seemed to imply an ignorance and amoralism among all soldiers because they are the extensions of the immoral war-engineers. At least Michael Moore had the decency to at least frame his display of dispicable behavior of the soldiers in the context that they were also falling victim to the policies of the administration. DePalma just seems to want to show American soldiers doing horrible things as the main argument against war. And there are so many better arguments against this or any war. Instead, like the WMD's, DePalma wanted to show something that would enrage the recipient of the message rather than appeal to intellect. It worked for the Bush clan, and it's working for DePalma. He doesn't seem to take into account that the United States military prosecuted the perpetrators of that crime. That it is NOT a policy to rape and murder, nor is is a policy to look the other way, to conceal such crimes, etc. The mere fact that people are very aware that Redacted is based on an actual case seems to undermine his argument that such crimes are in fact, "Redacted" from the media. He just seems rather upset that crimes like these aren't dwelled on. But I read plenty about this rape and murder, as I've read plenty about Abu Ghraib. What it appears to be is that DePalma is upset that there wasn't more outrage on the part of the American people over these incidents to the point that it ended the war. So in essence, his anger is that the American people haven't reacted in a manner he would like them to, and he believes that this is because the American people haven't been sufficiently immersed in the horror of war, so he's taken it upon himself to condense such atrocity, remove any mitigating nuance, and present it in a way that will support his point of view and achieve his desired result. Now tell me... does that not sound like the "ends justifies the means" rationale of the Bush administration or what? It's not being a Republican that makes Bush and his ilk evil... it's using these tactics. And DePalma uses these tactics. Ipso facto, presto changeo, he's just as bad as Bush. Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process they themselves do not become a monster, to paraphrase some dead German dude.

  6. Your charge is that BDP proposes "ignorance and amoralism among all soldiers because they are the extensions of the immoral war-engineers." If true, your chain of reasoning works. But I just don't believe that BDP had such an intention. After all, the soldiers in the film aren't all pig-ignorant thugs. They don't all go on the rampage. Some are sensible - notably the guy who tries to warn the idiots to sweep a field properly lest they get blown up. Some experience character development - notably the guy who goes home and ends up crying in a bar. I think you are being pretty reductionist regarding the characters presented here.