the Somalis were being portrayed as just a half-turn away from zombies, all mob-like and Other and unknowable
This didn't bother me, because the whole film was structured to show us the war through these specific soldiers' eyes. We didn't see any real countrysaide, we didn't get much of a sense of the history of the conflict, we did learn about the soldier's backgrounds, we didn't even get any info about what any military peronnel who weren't in Somalia thought or intended. It was a very limited viewpoint, but I though it worked well in what it set out to do. I could have wished for a more in-depth and well-rounded approach and I would certainly see that movie, but this worked for me in what it did. I've never been in a modern battle, I was interested in the chain of good and bad decisions and heroism and boredom and misunderstandings that played out in the film.
OK, I liked Talk Radio, but I like Eric Begosian. I think Stone at his worst is an anvil-handed, overly macho, misanthropic, lowest-common-denominator-pandering, not-just-revisionist-but-anti-historical, dead-eyed sorry excuse for a director with few, if any, redeeming qualities. I don't know why the guy gets to make movies in the first place.
It's possible that I may just have a slight hate-on for the guy.
Ya think?
And yet, I cannot disagree with a single word.
I have started
Natural Born Killers
at least three times, but always at night and have fallen asleep each time. Which boggles me, because I rather like what I've seen of it. I need to put that on my to-do list.
And yet, I cannot disagree with a single word.
Woo hoo! My sister in Oliver Stone hatred!
I love Eric Begosian. Had a great time with him at a live event a few years ago. (He was smoking. I was in the front row, having an allergy attack. He used it to hilarious effect in the act.)
Seeing him live kind of gives the lie to his all-nihilism all the time persona. I get the sense he's a lot more woobie than wrathful in real life.
And hey, small role in the upcoming Blade...I can't wait.
eta: oooh sorry
Hurray for Hayden's hate-on.
As for
Blackhawk Down,
This didn't bother me, because the whole film was structured to show us the war through these specific soldiers' eyes.
This is true. But I happened to watch BD for the first time a day or two after watching
28 Days Later,
and the zombies were portrayed in a fashion remarkably similar to how the Somalis came across, down to the jump-cuts and the screaming. It was really unnerving, and undercut BD significantly in my eyes. My immediate instinct was to blame Ridley Scott's love for visual fetishizing, but you don't fetishize unless you've already reduced the thing you're fetishizing to an object.
you don't fetishize unless you've already reduced the thing you're fetishizing to an object.
Can't you do it to reflect that the thing is fetishised by the POV you're trying to convey?
Can't you do it to reflect that the thing is fetishised by the POV you're trying to convey?
I don't know -- can you think of a (different) example? I certainly never saw any other point at which the film looked critically at the characters; rather, it seemed to endorse them, and by extension, their viewpoint, wholeheartedly. If the film had really meant to separate itself from the characters' viewpoint, I think there would have been more instances of critical distance.
It's not my experience that visuals can easily do that, portray something without endorsing it, without specific delineations of "now this is his POV" and "now this isn't". Like, B&W, or different film stock, or flashbacks. I think it's something that's harder to do in visuals than in, say, words, because people tend to assume that they are seeing "the truth", unless they are powerfully cued otherwise.
