I've been thinking about my review of Air India 182, and talking to colleagues, and I feel more and more that I missed the boat. I never thought I'd be writing reconsiderations, but I am trying to make this blog as honest and useful as I can - and I guess that sometimes means writing an addendum.
From a craft standpoint, Air India 182 is most certainly an impressive film: well thought out, and masterfully shot and edited. But the film's scope is extremely narrow: it tells the story of how the bombing of Air India 182 was carried out, why Canadian authorities were unable to stop it, and the effect it had on the families of the victims. That's it. It provides little context, and gives us nothing new aside from an interview with a CSIS agent. Aside from that one interview, it's a story we've heard many times, albeit usually in bits and pieces, over the last 23 years. And so the question is, after 23 years... that's it?
Surely, with a budget rumoured to be in the range of $2-million, the film could have accomplished more than that. It could have explored in much greater depth the growth of Sikh radicalism in the B.C. temples, and its roots in the Punjab - in other words, the environment in which the plot was hatched, and the culture of fear and silence that protected the perpetrators. It could have looked more closely at the failed investigation, and the lackadaisical attitude of the Canadian government, which sent condolences to the Indian government but not to the families of the hundreds of Canadian victims. In other words, it could have explored the culture that produced the terrorists and the one that allowed them to get away with mass murder. But the film barely touches on these aspects. Director Sturla Gunnarsson, whose wife (and Associate Producer) is a Sikh British Columbian, acknowledged his anger at the Canadian government in media interviews, but in the Q&A at Hot Docs all he had to say was, to paraphrase, CSIS and the RCMP didn't bomb the plane, the terrorists did. It's almost as if Air India 182 goes out of its way not to disturb the peace.
I can't help but think that the $2 million spent on this film could have paid for three or four films with less expensive visuals and more depth.
And another problem: the Ken Burns Effect. No, I'm not talking about the photo-manipulation tool in iMovie. The real Ken Burns Effect is this: when Burns tackles a subject - say, baseball, or the Second World War - it effectively puts the kybosh on any other filmmaker going to PBS for funding for any other story on the same subject. Burns, by eating up huge amounts of money and presenting his film as the definitive story, sucks the oxygen out of the room and - inadvertently, to be sure - shuts down debate. (The Canadian corollary is the People's History effect, but Ken Burns is more famous than Mark Starowicz, and he did it first.) Now that $2 million has been spent on the "definitive" Air India story, how likely is it that anyone else will be able to get funding for a different take?
2 comments:
You need a United 93 to bring the story home.
I agree that Sturla has sucked the oxygen out of the entire room on this one.
Even when I was seeing it, I couldn't help wondering if this was a 'drama' director doing his take on this particular story. Because even when enactment is used - by someone, like say Errol Morris - it only serves to piece together the whole. Not to distract, inflate or beautify - although if it does beautify without taking away from the subject, that's ok too. But I feel Sturla did not get into the subject, as a doc director does. If a Heddy Honigmann had done this - or any other good director - you will always see parts of them onscreen. That's, to me, the vision of a filmmaker and the raw magical beauty of a documentary - that the filmmaker has given as much of himself or herself to the horror and the pity - as you, the viewer, will, in turn give it. That, I believe, is what I found fundamentally lacking in this film and a little disturbing, really. I'm also somewhat concerned about the motivations of not just the director but also people who see it and say yes it's a good film - maybe out of a collective guilt. That's not why a film becomes great. When the film implicates you the viewer by showing you how you too are an organic part of this whole terrible cycle, that's when a documentary becomes really effective, not to point fingers and say this is what happened, so and so lost their family etc - of course these things are terribly important too - but the 'what now' is missing. Where do we go from here. What do we as Canadians NOW think of this. Are we going to let this happen or just be reactive - 20 years too late all over again?
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