Right off the bat I have a confession to make: I think most of Brian De Palma's films are crap. They stink, they're horrible, they're ungood and unwell made. When he makes a good one, it's generally very good, but they are rare exceptions. For every good De Palma film there are several that suck. For every The Untouchables there's...well, everything he's made since, and that's been twenty years.
His latest film, Redacted, premiered at the Venice film festival and left audiences sobbing. What is the source material for this inspirational presentation? The story of several US soldiers in Iraq kidnapping, raping, and murdering a 14-year-old Iraqi girl. As De Palma puts it, he read that account and knew he had a story.
Isn't that nice?
On the surface it sounds like a thin re-tread of his snoozefest, Casualties of War. It, too, involved rape, torture, and murder. It painted the picture that one good soldier comes forward to confess and he's the villain to the "military establishment".
De Palma apparently thinks less of the US military than he does of women, no mean feat. At least with Redacted he's close to telling a true story. But he doesn't make any bones about his intent, which is to smear our troops:
I have done something that just cannot be done. You can never say anything critical of the troops.
He also states quite clearly that he believes his film points out the "truth" of what our troops are doing in Iraq:
The movie is an attempt to bring the reality of what is happening in Iraq to the American people.
[...]
The pictures are what will stop the war. One only hopes that these images will get the public incensed enough to motivate their Congressmen to vote against this war.
Will his film point out that the soldiers in question -- those involved in the heinous crimes that inspired his fictional rendition -- were caught, tried, and convicted. The minimum sentence handed down was five years, the longest is 110 years, which I'm pretty sure translates to life imprisonment. I also believe at least one is facing execution. (This reality, by the way, utterly discredits his portrayal of the US military in Casualties, an irony I'm sure he'll miss.)
It's amazing to me that so many filmmakers take the De Palma tack. They see a criminal act and that inspires them to tell a story. Countless acts of common heroism don't. The parade of sacrifices that are quietly made by our men and woman in uniform don't. The mad acts of criminals do. The abusive and criminal behavior of a few attract their eye, while they are blind to everything else. Then, to their shame, they weave tales that imply that the aberration is the norm. (Why am I surprised? They believe how they think and act are the norms.)
A new wave of crap is coming from Hollywood to round out the year. It will be high quality crap. That is to say, it will be well-made, but it will still be crap because most will be based on a fundamental lie. The lie? That the few aberrant members of the military represent the military as a whole.
This is Hollywood's mantra, its creed, its belief. The participants, like De Palma, are clueless and wonder why they are treated with disgust and disdain.
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