the way the French ship was treated in "Master & Commander." We barely see it, or we see it from far away, which is how our sailors see it.

I think I see. Although, I think there is a differing code involved between the two examples -- for one thing, nobody takes M&C seriously as history, although it has certain truthful historical flourishes.

(Also, the French ship is also about 80% maguffin, isn't it? The Frenchness of the ship is immaterial to the plot (so much so that in the book it was American); indeed, for a long time in the middle, the ship is totally irrelevant -- storm, nature walks, trade, social conflict on-ship, jokes about weevils.)

With the whole film coded as adventure rather than history, portraying the enemy as other is just part of the genre, and invisible as a choice. And doesn't matter, because we know that we're not seeing real Frenchmen, but fantasy-Frenchmen, or anybody. Who they are really doesn't matter, because it's an adventure film.

Whereas, when the film is coded as history, failure to make explicit what is viewpoint and what is fact is visible and wrong-looking. If the BHD was an editorial, then I just disagree with it; but if it was history, and it seemed like that was what it wanted to be, then it was kind of crappy history. If it was an adventure movie, than I have even less respect for it than I had an hour ago.

I think movies can be based on a limited POV, just like any other narrative artwork, but the director needs to be clear that this is what's taking place if he or she wants to differentiate from an omniscient POV.

The obvious example is The Usual Suspects and you don't realize that you have an unreliable narrator until the very end.

I always used to get Oliver Stone confused with Ollie North.

But what about movies where the whole thing is limited POV? Can those exist successfully? How do you indicate that you don't share the POV, as a writer/director?

Yeah, but Nutty, the whole point of the film is to make us feel what battle was like for these specific soldiers, and showing us information they didn't know, like the larger political and cultural picture in Somalia,(and in the US for that matter) undercuts the very story they were trying to tell. Part of the point of the film is that these kids had no idea what the fuck was going on or who they were dealing with or why.

The obvious example

Yes!

I was suspicious of that one from the start, though, and figured it out pretty early on. This was mostly because when that one came out, I was just getting to be a big fan of unreliable POV and starting to be suspicious of who's telling me stories within stories. Not sure if there's a point to this anecdote besides saying "aren't I a smartie?," though.

I always used to get Oliver Stone confused with Ollie North.

This cracks me right up.

The rest of the movie was complete and utter shit.

I do have to give a few points for using Crispin Glover as Andy Warhol, but, yeah, pretty much a mess.

Someone compared Oliver Stone to Harlan Ellison in that (and I'm paraphrasing) their normal tone of voice is shouting at the top of their lungs. It CAN be effective (I love TALK RADIO, but as was already said, that's more due to Eric Boogosian, ANY GIVEN SUNDAY, and the parts of SALVADOR that concentrated on James Woods rather than trying to fit every piece of Salvadorian atrocity into his story) but usually it just makes me throw up my hands and say "you must chill!".

How do you indicate that you don't share the POV, as a writer/director?

I think The Talented Mr. Ripley walks back and forth over that line.

I always used to get Oliver Stone confused with Ollie North.

This cracks me right up.

Heh. I remember somehow hearing about them both around the same time, and being very confused when I tried to figure out why the director of The Doors was involved with the Iran-Contra scandal.

Natural Born Killers is the only reason I have for liking Stone at all, and it is not the actual movie I like. There is a bit in one of the deluxe edition special documentary things where he mentions what he had to cut to go from NC17 to R.

All it took was 30 seconds off the prison riot montage set to the Ministry song, and not a bit of the explicit gore in the rest of the film.

It shaped my whole understanding of censorship to have proof that it is all really about the discomfort of censor, and in no way about any specific standard of any kind.