Brian De Palma wants to stop the war, and he thinks his new movie about an Iraqi girl's rape can help, regardless of the consequences or the rights and privacy of Iraqis. In a Friday August 31 Reuters article, De Palma asserted “The movie is an attempt to bring the reality of what is happening in Iraq to the American people. Sky News online picked up the thread that he hoped his film "Redacted" will alert people about “these horrible things things that are happening, this horrible war that I am financing as an American citizen.”
De Palma's comments were made Friday, at the Venice Film Festival, after showing the movie that is supposedly based on the rape of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl from Mahmudiya who was then killed and her house set on fire. You know, every day stuff in the military.
“Redacted” is a do-over for De Palma, who made the same movie back in 1989 when it was called “Casualties of War” and starred Michael J. Fox. This is De Palma's second try at the “American military rapes indigenous girl and everyone laughs, but the sensitive guy feels sorry and tells; someone has nightmares, and the military is still bad” storyline. At least it wasn't “The Bonfire of the Vanities 2.”
Reuters noted De Palma's belief that if only people could see the real war photos and hear the real stories that aren't censored by the “corporate establishment,” people would simply turn against the war, thus ending it. No thought to Al Qaeda in Iraq and the insurgents or even Iran—apparently it will all just “stop” (emphasis mine throughout):
The pictures are what will stop the war, and if we can get these pictures in front of a mass audience, and get these stories in front of a mass audience, maybe we'll have some effect.
Reuters laid out a series of statements that showed how stupid and ill-informed he thinks Americans who support the war are by claiming they don't know the “truth” and just need his help to understand:
“It's all out there on the Internet, you can find it if you look for it, but it's not in the major media. The media is now really part of the corporate establishment," he said.
Right, everything on the Internet is true, in fact, there's a Nigerian prince who needs my help right now.
De Palma claimed that the mainstream media are not telling the whole story by withholding graphic images and in the process divulged his storyline isn't as “real” as he claimed:
"When I went out to find the pictures, I said (to the media) give me the pictures you can't publish," he said, adding that because of legal dangers he too had to "edit" the material.
"Everything that is in the movie is based on something I found that actually happened. But once I had put it in the script I would get a note from a lawyer saying you can't use that because it's real and we may get sued," De Palma said.
"So I was forced to fictionalize things that were actually real."
The media ignored this telling statement that he “fictionalized” the “things that were actually real” in a movie that is supposed to be the “reality” of what's going on in Iraq What does that leave?
Also, lawyers tend to worry more about being sued for libel and slander than factual events. They worry about Hollywood movies making claims that are not true. The truth is a defense against lawsuits, but random Internet rantings and the Jesse MacBeths and the Scott Beauchamps of the world make lawyers sweat.
Now De Palma showed that he is an Ugly American who doesn't care about the rights and privacy of people in a foreign country and the law:
The film, shot in Jordan with a little known cast, ends with a series of photographs of Iraqi civilians killed and their faces blacked out for legal reasons.
"I think that's terrible because now we have not even given the dignity of faces to this suffering people," De Palma said.
Because nothing says dignity like a Brian De Palma movie.
Contact Lynn at tvisgoodforyou2 at yahoo dot com
