+4
The clips from the video above show the film to be atrocious. I have to admit that I haven't really researched the actual film itself, but if those clips are in the finished film, then it makes even the cheapest rubber-suited monster film look like a documentary. I really have no desire to defend such garbage, and in fact, it seems to have only been made to produce a violent reaction in fundamentalist Muslims. Looking at it from that perspective, if the only reason for a "film" is to produce violence and death on innocents, then is the filmmaker actually responsible for a crime? I don't know enough of the back story, and I don't believe other works of art cause massive amounts of bloodshed, but those other works are art, and they've only seemed to delude select troubled people (Charles Manson, for example and his Beatles obsession). I'm not so sure that anything about this movie is art. It uses the tools of art to produce a completely predictable reaction and seems to be the reason it was made in the first place. It seems to be an attempt to escalate Muslim-Christian hatred for each other in some twisted fueling of the flames of ignorance and hatred. I suppose that would make it propaganda, and I've defended Leni Riefenstahl's films on here because they were artistic in the extreme and could be watched without seemingly inciting violence.
Another thing to consider is that there is no way that any of the terrorists involved in recent attacks have seen this movie. It's just that they hear about it and react in a fudamentalist, violent way. The same thing happens here involving so-called sacrilegious films where they are protested and pariahed. The naysayers never see the films but say what you will about "Christianty" causing death and violence throughout the centuries, Christian fundamentalists don't seem to go into violent rampages over films. They may get violent in other areas, but once again, I would hope and think that the majority would come out and shun all violence and murdering, but instead we keep going to war to show that our fundamental beliefs are better than others' fundamental beliefs.
I realize that this is rambling, but I just watched the Iranian film A Separation last night. It's very humanistic and paints an even-handed portrait of life in modern Iran, plus it's an intense personal drama presented almost in the manner of a thriller. Yet, this film ran into some problems with government officials because everything is supposed to be strictly black-and-white and not in shades of gray. The writer/director has moved to Europe to live and make future films. In this case, the people who didn't care for the film didn't get violent and even allowed it to pass the censors and be released in Iran. It eventually won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. There is a mountain of difference between that video above and A Separation, and if more people would involve themselves wiith the latter, the world would be a better place. But hey, death, violence, religious wars, terrorism and stupidity sell, so we're stuck in the reality which we have made for ourselves.
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