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Author
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Topic: Green Zone
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Stu Jamieson
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 524
From: Buccan, Qld, Australia
Registered: Jan 2008
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posted 03-13-2010 07:39 PM
After the admirably apolitical The Hurt Locker comes the intensely political Green Zone, a story about the lies perpetuated by the US military machine regarding the existence of WMDs in Iraq and the efforts of one front-line grunt (who bears a striking resemblance to Matt Damon) to expose the truth. The result is a mixed bag of high tension, the destruction thereof and a blurring of the lines between fact and fiction.
Hand held camera work is Paul Greengrass' strength as it is his bane. In some instances, like the films opening scenes for example, the disorientation and confusion which this cinematographic technique creates complements perfectly the uncertainty and chaos in the action on screen - fear, bombs, looters, an army in disarray - the depiction of an uncontrolled environment using an equally uncontrolled camera style is masterfully appropriate. At other times, however, it just seems lazy, like nobody could be bothered setting up a dolly or even a tripod. A chase scene, for instance, is not uncontrolled. It is a precise combination of events: A is followed by B, B is followed by C, D and e etc. It is important to be able to follow these details in order to comprehend the action but when shakily shot by Greengrass it is impossible to determine who is chasing who, who just got shot or where anybody is in relation to anybody else. There's nothing for the audience to do but watch glazy eyed until the dust settles and find out who's left standing at the end. Similarly, employing shaky-cam within the strictly-controlled environs of a military briefing also makes no sense and smacks of laziness.
The film weaves fact with fiction in a way which makes it difficult to distinguish the boundary between the two - unless, perhaps, you happen to be a Gulf War analyst. But most of us are not which makes the films approach somewhat questionable considering the conflict in question is ongoing and the effect the film may have on the public consciousness as regards the truth of the matter. And public consciousness, of course, influences politics. While this can be a positive force, it can be a negative one as well so defined boundaries of truth are paramount. Perhaps it would be appropriate to preface films such as this with a disclaimer emphasising the fictional nature of some of its elements? This would have been appropriate in some other films of modern historical significance, the otherwise excellent The Last King Of Scotland comes to mind.
Some inherent social responsibility is required of a film like this and I'm not convinced Greengrass takes this seriously enough. That aside, Greengrass certainly knows how to create tension in his films but he also (unwittingly presumably) knows how to destroy it. The result is that Green Zone is a mixed bag of everything which is good and bad about the Greengrass style and as such this will be considered one of his lesser works, sitting below the likes of United 93 and The Bourne Ultimatum.
7.5 out of 10.
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Galen Murphy-Fahlgren
Master Film Handler
Posts: 405
From: Canton, MI, USA
Registered: Oct 2007
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posted 03-14-2010 05:31 PM
I saw this on Friday night, and the theater (my old one) had already managed a faint scratch running through the print. Clearly, standards have fallen some. Apart from that, I thought the quality of the print was quite nice. Sharp, steady, the colors were beautifully saturated, and the contrast was good.
Usually, shaky cam irritates me tremendously (I wrote off Cloverfield just from auditorium checks), but it was well executed enough that it was at best complimentary to the action, and at worst a minor annoyance. The film overall was quite enjoyable, even as the plot was extremely transparent. The movie successfully conveys the confusion and uncertainty of our troops' early days in Baghdad, between a relatively easy military march and a very hard and bloody counterinsurgency. This state of confusion serves as the backdrop for a conspiracy thriller which entertains through its execution, if not through any great twist of plot. You may come to wonder at a certain point if there will in fact be a turn of the rather inexorable plot, but there will in fact not, and the movie will end more or less as the second reel promises it will.
Stu, while I don't disagree on your point about the filmmaker's social responsibility in a project like this, I think the citizen must assume some responsibility and pick up a reputable newspaper from time to time. Anyone who is to any extent informed on current events will be able to separate the fiction from the nonfiction, unless they are my age and were very young at the time. You don't have to worry overmuch about my "peers", as they don't vote, or generally watch political conspiracy thrillers, for that matter.
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Galen Murphy-Fahlgren
Master Film Handler
Posts: 405
From: Canton, MI, USA
Registered: Oct 2007
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posted 03-14-2010 07:02 PM
If that aspect of the film were based on reality, would any of us know about it? Without being political, what is clear in hindsight is that the intelligence with which the case for war was made was inaccurate, but who knew what and when is still not known. What we do know now (based upon questioning while he was in custody) is that Hussein didn't allow inspectors who would find that there were no current programs because he thought that the ambiguity of the issue kept his regime safe from Iran, and he was (apparently mistakenly) more afraid of Iran than the United States. Those are the facts as they have come out, but any analysis of such broad issues is likely to be political, which is forbidden by forum rules, as well as being difficult to fully elaborate any thoughtful position on the internet, the ancestral home of extreme viewpoints and knee jerk reactions.
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