Friday, October 19, 2012

Favorite quote from Zach Campbell


Favorite quote from Zach Campbell about the film REDACTED (2007, Brian De Palma):
" A state functions by excluding something, even most things, from its own body politic.  In the act of defense of that very body, and of those very lines, the military arm of the state can cross the lines which had previously been counted upon to help constitute the very substance of that state's body politic.  (In other words, murder would be implemented so as to protect/"protect" even the Land of Pacifism.  Protection of the law entails extra-legal force.)   Even when such transgressions are not officially ordered or sanctioned, they often goes unpunished, or punished only by a scapegoat.  ("Sovereign is he who decides the exception.")  But for the citizen of a state, putatively democratic, who sees this transgression, in fact takes part in it - even from off to one side - there remains a profound ethical problem.  And the modes of seeing such transgressions multiply; rather than carrying truth on their own, they instead act as shattered glass or shards of a mirror.  Perhaps they inure us with their small, image-heavy truths to the demand a more singular, clearer articulation of truth might convey.  Redacted sketches out exactly this sort of clarion meta-picture.
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I haven't seen REDACTED yet, but what Zach Campbell wrote unintentionally reminds me of some films directed by Arthawut Boonyuang, such as WOMEN IN DEMOCRACY (2009, 6min) and I REMEMBER (2011, 90min).


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