Hollywood showed off its growing obsession with war and politics this week, as this year’s Toronto and Venice film festivals got underway. One film especially, Brian De Palma’s latest Redacted, has shaken audiences with its graphic depiction of the Iraq War, particularly the portrayal of the real-life rape of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the subsequent murder of her and her family by U.S. soldiers.
For “pure shock value,” Redacted is stealing the show in Venice, said Mike Collett-White and Silvia Aloisi for Reuters. But Paul Haggis’s In the Valley of Elah offers “a more nuanced take on the conflict,” and features a great performance by Tommy Lee Jones, as well as a “defining image of an American flag hanging upside down.” And critics have praised the competition overall, which includes politically themed films about “Iraq, migrant labour in Britain, corruption in America, the Italian mafia, and police brutality in Egypt.”
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