Redacted: De Palma Says His Film Was Censored
Oh, the irony. Brian
De Palma's latest film, Redacted, has
itself been redacted. In a contentious
press conference at the New York Film Festival last Monday, and a few days
later in an interview with Brian Lehrer on WNYC, De Palma complained that his
film had been censored. He said that
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who contributed $5 million to the
production, had insisted on obscuring the faces of Iraqi casualties in a
montage that appears at the end of the film.
In the WNYC interview, De Palma recounted, "Here, I'm faced with an insurance company that's asking for releases for war photographs, which are nonexistent. These are actual war photographs, taken by an Iraqi photographer, and they prevented me from using them because they came up with the idea that if one of the relatives of one of the Iraqis happens to see this film and has a strong emotional reaction, they could possibly sue the company that made the film, which has of course never happened. And I begin to wonder, are the insurance companies part of the redaction process now?"
It wasn't the only obstacle De Palma faced in realizing his intentions for the film. The director told Lehrer, "I read about this incident, this rape and murder in Iraq, and of course it reminded me so much of a movie I made called Casualties of War...and I said here we are, back here again...I went on the internet to sort of research the actual case and I came up with all these unique visual presentations, whether they were blogs or YouTube postings or rants...I was going to try to use real material, like real TV reportage on the event...but every time I tried to use something real, the lawyers who were vetting my script would say you can't use that, because that's about the actual event and these guys are still being prosecuted, so you have to change it all."
The forced change seems to underscore the point De Palma was trying to make. He explained, "The reason that I was drawn to making this film and showing how artfully you can lie using television and the internet is because I've been watching the propaganda from the Bush administration, telling us how great everything is...being a film director you're very aware of how these images are manipulated."
De Palma won the Silver Lion for best director at the Venice Film Festival last month, and Redacted opens November 16th.
I am appalled to hear that Redacted has been redacted. As if it were possible to further destroy the identities of the poor, maimed, dead Iraqis whose faces formed the background of the end titles in Brian De Palma’s film, now add the redaction of their images entirely. Are the cost benefit analysts working for the pharmaceuticals, automobile manufactures and the tobacco companies the only ones with any sense of risk or courage anymore? I prefer to think this has less to do with protecting the producers from legal action or the Iraqis from humiliation and invasion of privacy, than a monumental cowardice when it comes to confronting of the American moviegoer with a little too much reality. De Palma’s initial acquiescence to the insurers forced him to abandon the use of any actual footage in the body of the film. This has already resulted in the Right Wing warmongers accusing him of “making it all up” because he restaged rather than using the real footage. This colossal inability on their part to understand the difference between art and life is too outrageous to even deserve comment.
What this chronic failure of nerve on the part of underwriters will do to the future of actual documentary filmmaking I leave to cynical speculation. I am convinced however that eventually the entertainment industry, corporations and the insurance pencil pushers will so lobotomize the creative spirit in this country, that the only artists left in our culture will be members of the Britney Spears Ilk’s Club.
If you wish to see an unrepentant, unredacted piece of filmmaking that is not afraid of lawsuits and not afraid to show the real face of war, I recommend to you a moving three minute video on YouTube called “Kindertotenlied”.
http://youtube.com/results?search_query=kindertotenlied&search=Search
I hope that when the producers, whose footage was stolen for use in this video, finally get around to suing the filmmaker, they will learn exactly how much blood can be squeezed from a rock (as opposed to Iraq). Abject poverty, my friends, does have its privileges.
Peace,
Bob Boldt