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Recent
articles in a couple of mainstream magazines state that the documentary
and fictional films that have come out over the past year dealing with
subversive, immoral “wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan, perpetrated by the
U.S. and its contractors, like Blackwater, are not getting the
audiences they should.
Filmmakers and critics are asking why?
One
asks, “Is it too soon, since these wars are ongoing?" Owen
Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly surmised that “too soon” has become
not just our explanation but our excuse: “A knee-jerk justification for
an America that has checked out on the promise of movies that delve
into the issue of our time.”
Some
movie critics feel that the films could have done better had they had
more bite, a stronger point of view which would have helped
artistically as well as financially. Instead, the films were simply
vaguely challenging.
Films
dealing with the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan from the last month
or two include “In the Valley of Elah,” with Tommy Lee Jones; the
documentary, “No End in Sight;” “A Mighty Heart,” with major box-office
draw Angelina Jolie; Jaimie Foxx in “The Kingdom;” South African
director Gavin Hood’s
“Rendition;” and Robert Redford’s “Lions for Lambs.” “Redacted,” a film by Brian de
Palma, came out last month but barely lasted a couple of weeks at most
first-run movie theaters. The film is a fictionalized version of a real
atrocity: the rape of a teenage Iraqi girl, and her and her family’s
subsequent murder by a U.S. Army squad.
In
an interview before the film’s release, with David Ansen of Newsweek,
De Palma said that he hoped that “Redacted” would jump start antiwar
soldiers into action. He also stated that people are not fervently
active in protesting the so-called wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because
they are not getting the images on television as during the Viet Nam
war. “We don’t see Iraqi casualties,” he said, a fact that weighed in
on his justification for making “Redacted.”
He
went on to say that the Pentagon controls what’s seen in the media regarding
images of wounded, dead, and dying Iraqis and soldiers. This American
defense operation recalled the impact the images made – turning people
against the Viet Nam War; it did not want to make the same mistake.
Why
star-powered, well-crafted films about Afghanistan and Iraq do poorly
at the box office is explained by Iraq veterans and members of Iraq
Veterans Against the War, who are speaking out. Some had joined the
military because of personal or financial difficulties, or for an
education once discharged.
Some, regardless of their position on the war, feel America
doesn’t want to deal with Iraq, period; there’s just apathy, which is
what they discover when they return to the States.
As
one Iraq veteran who’s being treated for PTSD told the San Francisco
Chronicle (Nov. 23, 2007), "[The war] is happening somewhere else
to somebody else, and the last thing they want to do is go see a movie
about it." Lack of public interest affected him strongly.
One
veteran felt that "The Valley of Elah," a film that also
featured major stars - Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron, and Susan
Sarandon – “got it right."
"Elah"
concerns soldiers’ difficulties once they return home, as the war
doesn’t end for them, ever, as it hasn’t for anyone, civilian or
military for generations, who has experienced its horrors.
Many
vets have said that if people saw the films, they would no longer have
an excuse not to do anything.
Still, the images are out there if one knows where to look.
David Ansen, in Newsweek, brought out the fact that more people turn
out in one day to see a huge Hollywood blockbuster than see documentary
films like “Gunnar Palace,” “No End it Sight,” or “The War Tapes”
during their entire run - films that are made to protest an unpopular,
ongoing war.
The
question remains: are audiences willing to pay to see more of these
painful images? The answer still may be a disheartening “no.” Yet,
filmmakers will not give up. More films on Iraq and Afghanistan are
being released before the end of the year: Tom Hanks’s “Charlie
Wilson’s War,” and “Grace is Gone,” with John Cusack.
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