Redacted

This famous film by Brian de Palma was almost boycotted in the USA. The screenplay was based on actual events which took place in March 2006 in Mahmudiyah, Iraq. A group of American soldiers raped and burned a fourteen-year-old Iraqi girl and shot members of her family. The film’s narration is stylised as a journal made by the characters using a camcorder, but this is only one of the means used to make the film presentation of the event look more realistic. There are also CCTV recordings, video-blogs, films placed by soldiers on YouTube, TV news, a French documentary, and an “objective” epilogue set in the USA. This wealth of forms shows clearly how the media constructs a message, directing the viewers’ perception. The first war in Iraq was sometimes referred to as a television war. Currently, the media race to inform people about a tragedy as quickly and truthfully as possible.

De Palma’s work offers HD High-End quality of image and sound was recorded with excellent specialist equipment. Formal eclecticism, undoubtedly the hallmark of Redacted, does not obscure the contesting (critic of the course and sense of military operations) and ethical (categories of guilt and conscience) aspects of the film.

Jan Topolski