Redacted

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Fresh off the heels of Rendition, I watched another much maligned 2007 political film that starts with "Re," Brian DePalma's Redacted. Much like Rendition, I thought the film was a failure as a political statement, and I didn't much like it. Unlike Rendition, however, I have a certain admiration for its style and audacity.

A lot of why this movie fails comes down to the writing, which I think supplies a lot of bad dialogue and unconvincing behavior from the characters. DePalma essentially lifts the plot from his Casualties of War and applies it the Iraq war, which makes sense because I think DePalma sees Iraq as Vietnam Part 2. But by focusing on the rape/murder of a little Iraqi girl by drunk soldiers not following orders, I don't think his movie works as a critique of the war. Maybe he means it as a microcosm of the larger situation, but that doesn't come across. Instead, he fails to tie the actions of the (cartoonishly evil) soldiers to any greater policy failure. It's the first movie I've seen that actually seems anti-soldier rather than anti-war, which I think is the exact opposite of how most of us feel.

Still, DePalma is one ballsy filmmaker, and if you're a fan this is one you should see, even though you won't like it. The movie pretends to be made up of documentary footage; some made by the soldiers themselves, some made by the terrorists, clips from the news, You Tube videos, and in the film's most audacious, DePalma-style flair, a slow-paced documentary narrated in French with subtitles in multiple languages. I don't think this media saturated approach quite works, but at least he's trying to make some points about the failure of media to tell the full truth or depict more than one side of reality. (Funny then that he doesn't seem to do anything to critique his own film.) Further complicating things is the ending, which purports to be real photos of dead Iraqi civilians, but clearly contains staged photos and moments from the film. I don't much like your movie, DePalma, but I have to give you credit for making it provocative.

Anyways, this style does give him a way to try out some of his favorite themes in a new context, for example shifting points of view, or killing off a character you assumed was the lead. This is not a good movie, it's unconvincing, misguided and almost unwatchably bad by the end, but DePalma's nuts are as big as ever, and I will always respect him for that.