September 28, 2003
Required Viewing
Paul Greengrass' harrowing and mesmerising 2002 re-creation of the eponymous 1972 "Bloody Sunday" massacre of unarmed Northern Ireland civil rights protesters by the British military is among the finest couple of dozen films this blogger has ever screened.
Winner of the Best Picture award at both Sundance and Berlin, the film, based on journalist Don Mullan's 1997 account Eyewitness Bloody Sunday has been released concurrent to the ongoing re-examination of the day's events, begun under the auspices of Lord Saville in 1998, and scheduled to conclude in 2004 (and which in turn was impelled in part by Mullan's book). The British military's justification for the shootings -- which, in the age of global communications quickly became recognised as gospel the world over -- had it that the troops had been fired on by armed rioters. The official inquiry into the matters, the Widgery Report, found the British military innocent of any wrongdoing -- found, in the words of Mullan, "the guilty innocent, and the innocent guilty".
Filmed documentary-style entirely with handheld cameras, and scored only with the crackle of British radio communications, the film bristles with a breathtaking immediacy and authenticity. Indeed, a great many of the 10,000 extras used to re-create the day's fateful march had participated in the original 1972 march, while the actors used to portrary the British paratroopers were themselves former troopers. At the heart of the film, James Nesbitt's astonishing performance as protestant MP and leader of the Civil Rights movement Ivan Cooper is perhaps the finest by an "actor in a leading role" since Brando's Don Corleone.
The intent in making the film was, in the words of Greengrass, to "create an account that can be recognised across these islands" as an accurate representation of the day's events. A kind of truth-commission-in-waiting for the "official" findings of the Saville inquiry.
By all accounts, the filmmakers, who have dedicated the movie to "all victims of political violence in Ireland and the World", have succeeded. In fact, they insist that the major victory was in the making of the film, a "mini-peace process", according to Mullan, whose greatest import was "that it was made by Irish and British people together" (Greengrass and producer Mark Redhead are both British). Nesbitt, a Protestant, echoes Mullan: "...a big section of the Unionist community realise we can't walk away, and we've got to sit down and acknowledge things and share things."
The World's peace and justice movements can perhaps learn a lesson from the success, despite its miniscule budget, of the film in not only reaching a wide audience, but in bringing antagonists together to find a common ground. Because of both its availability to mass audiences and the visceral nature of the medium, agitprop filmmaking should be a more effective educational and organising tool that it at present seems to be.
For, as with most great works of art, Bloody Sunday transcends its specific context to make a universal statement condemning injustice wherever it lies, and commanding the world's attention for the plight of the dispossessed.
Viewers with similar experiences will inevitably be transported to the streets of fin de siecle Seattle, or Genoa, or Washington, DC. And here lies the true import of the film, an indictment of the use of violence -- from any party -- to settle political disputes. (Mullan, who says that if he had been a few years older he would probably have joined up the IRA following the days events, is especially insistent on this point.)
The British machinations of 30 years ago -- the insistence that, while the "loss of life is greatly to be regretted", the killing of innocent civilians could be justified as an act of "self-defence" (a ridiculous position even if the violence had been initiated in the streets) ; the use of the overarching "war against the IRA" to validate the use of force (even if, as in this case, the IRA had nothing to do with the day's events); the restriction of civil liberties in the name of "security"; the internment without due process of dissidents and/or those that can be associated (however flimsily) with "terrorists" -- reverberate strongly in George Bush's America.
Perhaps most chillingly, the viewer will recognise in today's context the ominous prescience of Cooper's admonitions to the British government, following the day's events:
You know what you've just done, don't you? You've destroyed the Civil Rights Movement. And you've given the IRA the biggest victory it will ever have. All over this city tonight, young men...boys, will be joining the IRA, and you will reap a whirlwind.
Tony Kushner, in a recent Seattle Weekly interview, posits that "whatever you do with your day job -- and writing plays is what I do -- is no replacement for activism, which is a necessary part of being a citizen in a democracy. And not to be foolish and think that writing a political play is going to do it, because there's only one thing that does it -- organizing and voting and demonstrating and fundraising and e-mailing and joining groups. Art is not [it]."
But if the two worlds -- activism and art, soul and heart -- can be successfully commingled, so much the better will be our chances of humanising the world's polities. Bloody Sunday is a giant step down this path.
Posted by Eddie Tews at September 28, 2003 11:25 AM
Comments
Yes, there were plenty of blunders in planning for the postwar, many perhaps because the State Department and CIA were too suspicious of Iraqi exiles. In hindsight, it would have been smarter to trust the exiles more - and train more of them as Iraqi soldiers and police.
It's also true that the Bush administration has been remarkably inept at communicating the success stories out of Iraq.
One result is the surging growth of an Internet universe - a lot of it linked via Instapundit.com - focused on spreading good news from Iraq and lambasting "Big Media," especially the anti-American BBC, for ignoring it.
But this week's Time magazine is typical of a press corps that has - mostly - raced to highlight every bit of bad news from Iraq, and virtually none of the good news.
When NBC anchor Tom Brokaw went to Iraq, it was as if he was visiting a different country than that any other TV journalist had reported from, because he left Baghdad and many of his reports actually had an optimistic tone.
Why? Perhaps because Brokaw has chronicled the Greatest Generation and World War II, a time of patience instead of attention deficit disorder and a demand for overnight success. Nowadays, one can imagine critics instantly howling for Dwight D. Eisenhower's head over the deaths on D-Day.
It's worth remembering, as critics revive their Vietnam quagmire comparisons, that over 57,000 U.S. troops died in Vietnam and so far the U.S. death toll in Iraq is 308, fewer than the 343 firemen who were killed on 9/11.
Every death is a tragedy. But that doesn't make the war a failure. In fact, it is a success.
--Excerpt from Deborah Orin, NY Post 9-29-03 -- Posted by: facts aren't eddie's best friend on September 29, 2003 12:49 PM