Oh the distractions are many. I saw a trailer to this movie and already figured out it had nothing to do with the real events - just another Hollywood Hackjob of reality - and I wasn’t going to be watching it, since I’m horrified by what Americans find entertaining these days.
Now I hear from someone who’s sat through what apparently an even more disgusting movie than I though, but, one that Americans seem to have totally fallen in love with, if it’s box office gro$$ and award nominations are any indication.
In any event, Carole Cadwalladr wrote a most insightful article that dares to consider how this Hollywood mentality is copied and emulated by ISIS.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/17/revenant-leonardo-dicaprio-violent-meaningless-glorification-pain … The woman is not actually raped, of course. She’s faux raped. Because this is what we call acting. And because The Revenant is what we call entertainment. There’s a crucial difference between us and the people we are currently trying to blow to smithereens with million-pound missiles: we choose to pay to watch women being pretend raped rather than watching women being actually raped for free. ... … Director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s idea was for it to look as real as possible. … ...And in all probability, it will win every Oscar going. Critics have lavishly praised its “visceral" imagery, its “authentic" feel; it is, they say, “immersive" film-making at its finest. Though, arguably, not as immersive as putting a camera in a cage and then setting a man on fire. Have you seen that one? Where the man is burned alive? It’s not by González Iñárritu, but Isis. It wasn’t nominated for anything but the pain is even more real, more visceral, more – what was the word, thrilling? – than DiCaprio’s. But then, all of Isis’s video output is inspired by our own entertainments – in its subject matter, its soundtrack, its editing. Islamic State hasn’t invented new narrative tropes, it’s simply lifted them straight from Hollywood. All it’s done is to go one step further, trumped Hollywood at its own game. It has seen what we want, what we thrill to, and given it to us. If there were grizzly bears in the Syrian desert, there’s no doubt that they’d put one in a cage and let us see what it really looks like when one rips a man apart. ... ...though perhaps we could all try and act a little less surprised by the Islamic State’s next video spectacular. Or ask ourselves why pain and suffering and brutalising women and pointless, fetishistic violence – when it’s done by Hollywood – wins awards. Or why we’re so keen for it to look “real". What neurotransmitters are we releasing? What thirst are we slaking? Isis’s films are simply the next logical step of our films. Their culture is actually our culture too. Isis hasn’t invented any of this. It is just a bit more honest about it. More “authentic". More “visceral". More “real".