Aubrey Malone
A slow-burn and affecting drama
A Thousand Times Goodnight (12A)
It was really only in the last few minutes of this film, directed by the acclaimed Norwegian Erik Poppe, that I developed real respect for war photographer Rebecca (Juliette Binoche). Up until this I found myself becoming irritated by her Joan of Arc complex.
I was equally irritated by her husband Marcus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) who looks like a kind of comic book Norse warrior and works as a marine biologist. (Whenever directors want to idealise a character in a film they always have him working as a marine biologist).
There are also some pragmatic implausibilities. How, for instance, could the magazine Rebecca works for justify the fact that at the beginning of the film she witnesses the prelude to a suicide bombing? She even photographs the (female) bomber being strapped up with explosives and yet doesn't do anything to stop it?
Would this not be seen as collusion? Or, as one of her colleagues at the magazine puts it, a glorification of violence?
Rebecca views it differently. And, to her credit, she does succeed in getting the UN to step up security at a refugee camp as a result of her photographs of a marauding army. But for much of the time I felt her character was a mite too precious, too self-serving, even too heartless. (In the suicide bomber scene as she insists on snapping the distraught bomber's face as she readies herself for slaughter).
Stability
That's not to gainsay Rebecca's savage indignation at a society that prioritises trivia about smug celebrities like Paris Hilton to war reportage. Or the film's undeniable good intentions as it takes us into the belly of the jihad beast and effectively contrasts it with Rebecca's relatively idyllic Dublin surroundings as she jogs along Dollymount Strand.
The central focus is the manner in which Rebecca's continual forays into the jaws of death alienate her first from Marcus and then from her daughter Steph (Lauryn Canny) after the pair of them journey to Kenya.
Will she put concern for her safety above her atavistic concerns or continue to globetrot into war-torn locales in search of graphic images that will, as she puts it, make people choke over their morning coffee as they view her images?
This is a slow-moving film that dwells on Binoche's face too often but it sucks you into its dreamy ambience as Rebecca oscillates between saving the world and preserving her tenuous domestic stability.
Notwithstanding its tendency to nudge us repeatedly in the ribs with its gravitas, it's nonetheless an important film that will probably generate more emotion in other viewers than it did with me. But then I've always felt the people who fight in wars deserve more credit than those who capture their actions for posterity.
War photographers are of course necessary and brave but I found something almost adolescent about Binoche's incessant snapping here, at least until those agonising final moments when she finally seems to realise that sometimes the most genuine response to an unfolding tragedy isn't a photograph but rather stunned silence.
**** Excellent
