The Tillman Story (Amir Bar-Lev, 2010)

What a pleasant surprise!

What a horrible way to start this review.  This is an infuriating film.

I had heard nothing about this film, but it gave me a lot to think about.  The Tillman Story retells Pat Tillman’s decision to abandon his multimillion-dollar football contract in order to serve in the US Army in Afghanistan in 2002.  Already a national football star, Tillman’s decision attracted a fair amount of press, but only in his death did he become a household name.  The film examines how Tillman’s death was taken by the government and spun into a pro-war media spectacle.  Tillman was depicted as an American hero, who died in an intense firefight with the opposition, when in reality he died by friendly fire.

The Tillman Story is very much a post-Michael Moore documentary.  Audiences have grown to be wary of documentaries with a master of ceremonies and are much more open to a “figure it out yourself” narrative.  Do not misunderstand, the information is prescriptive and Josh Brolin’s narration is very sympathetic, but it is tempered with self-explanatory footage–e.g. Donald Rumsfeld and other top officials pleading ignorance in front of the supreme court (shameful footage indeed).  I was consistently surprised with the acuteness of Bar-Lev’s eye; he effortlessly dances between the hilarious and the truly tragic aspects of this young man’s death with such speed that I could only keep up by crying and laughing at the same time.

What struck me about this film is how quickly an idea can consume a person.  Pat Tillman did not believe in god or want a military burial, yet the famous politicians attending his high-profile military funeral all solemnly proclaimed how Tillman was now up in heaven and at peace with god.  Following this, one of his younger brothers speaks (skip to 7:25):

He’s fucking dead. I still can’t shake this clip.  It kicked me in the stomach in the theater and I can’t even watch it now.  Consider sitting through your loved one’s funeral as people who never knew him drone on about the country and the glory of war (Tillman is later recounted watching the bombing of Baghdad and saying. “This war is so fucking illegal.”)–I was shaking in my seat.  To feel such a visceral reaction is rare for me, but the blatant truth in some of the footage is undeniable and simply presented.  I never thought I would describe any documentary as “true”, but The Tillman Story is remarkable.

After the film finished, a woman in the back was loudly chatting with her friends: “You know who really upsets me is Donald Rumsfeld.  If I could just shoot anybody in the head, it’d be him.”  Really?  Really.  Films like this leave me feeling helpless because, while a lot of information is presented, no solutions are even hinted at.  This only enrages the viewer and equips her with enough sound bites to keep up conversation at her monthly olive-tasting and short fiction club.  If you ask about it, she’ll tell you to go see the film instead of running for office.  Information is only useful in concert with action, and I’m alarmed by how satisfying and easy it is to take in information without any consequence for inaction. How does one deal with this barrage of corruption and misinformation?

I, for one, postponed my political campaign and went to see two more films.

]]> http://sainteliotandco.com/reviews/the-tillman-story/feed/ 1 http://sainteliotandco.com/blog/whose-tube/ http://sainteliotandco.com/blog/whose-tube/#comments Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:53:34 +0000 Giampaolo Bianconi http://sainteliotandco.com/?p=1980

Video artist Amy Greenfield was recently informed that Youtube would be pulling her work from their website. She was told that “her works, which contain some artistic nudity, did not conform with YouTube’s ‘community standards.’ Under YouTube’s policies, ‘Films and television shows may contain [full nudity]; however, videos originating from the YouTube user community must abide by the YouTube Community Guidelines and are not permitted to include such content.’” Though Youtube has now reversed their decision thanks to efforts from the EFF and the National Coalition Against Censorship, I fear the issue is far from over. I found out about the story through BoingBoing, where one reader identified only as pjcamp commented: “I’m having a hard time telling the difference between artistic nudity and busty.pl[.]” I’m having a hard time deciphering “busty.pl,” but what intrigues me about pjcamp’s comment is how magnificently it manages to miss the point completely.

Youtube isn’t protecting anyone from “busty.pl,” though it might appear so. What’s happening, instead, is that Youtube is continually serving the interests of “films and television shows.” These, to be sure, aren’t your films or the tv talk show you and your friends record every Sunday night: “films and television” shows are films and television shows from networks, studios, and distributors that have a serious financial worries about how their media is viewed. Since Amy Greenfield wasn’t one of those, her work got axed–though, presumably, if it had been from the film Young Adam starring Ewan McGregor, Youtube wouldn’t have thought twice. That’s what is dangerous about Youtube: its interests couldn’t have less to do with you. The question is not one of moral censorship but rather of financial censorship: Youtube isn’t barring nudity, they’re just not allowing it if you aren’t distributed by Fox Searchlight. It’s a question, all the same, about what we’re allowed to see.