1966. An incident in Vietnam... the story of a repeated rape and a murder that could have been prevented, but which no one even wishes to punish—only to ignore. Casualties of War, a war regarded in America as synonymous with the loss of innocence, in which the heroes of the two World Wars became the villains and the executioners.
1987. After his first incredible mainstream success with The Untouchables, Brian De Palma, propelled onto the list of directors most coveted by the studios, could make whatever film he wanted. And he chose a controversial, repugnant, revolting subject, one that was later vehemently denied by almost everyone, especially Vietnam veterans. A real, infamous case that he had dreamed of bringing to the screen since 1969, when he saw at the Berlin Film Festival a film on the same subject, inspired by Daniel Lang's New York Times article. At the same time, one of his favourite films is The Bridge on the River Kwai, and De Palma decides to become David Lean for a little while (hence the key sequence on the bridge).
Filmed in Thailand under extremely harsh conditions, with an A-list cast of young actors on the rise (Michael J. Fox, Sean Penn, John Leguizamo, John C. Reilly), Casualties of War was released in 1989, only to be torn apart by critics, who found it exploitative and visceral, and almost completely ignored by audiences who had grown weary of Vietnam. Constructed as one vast flashback (and nightmare at the same time), it contains De Palma's overwhelming visual style and his recurring obsessions: guilt, the betrayal of comradeship, impossible love, impotence, passive voyeurism. But this time, instead of Brian De Palma's much-discussed Hitchcockian thriller fantasies, the events unfolding on screen are based on a true story. The viewer becomes complicit in the carnage, and the unsettling feeling of guilt gradually, methodically, almost paroxysmally takes hold. Ennio Morricone's score (following his previous collaboration on The Untouchables), punctuated by Gheorghe Zamfir's pan flute, is the film's principal source of emotion—elegiac, mournful, evocative of ghosts from the past and shattered dreams.
2006. The film America could not bear to watch, one of the most anti-war films ever made, is today being reassessed and regarded as equal to, or even greater than, its predecessors: The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket. And the victim of the war behind the screen continued to develop his recurring themes, concealed within his much-discussed Hitchcockian thriller fantasies, without ever again disturbing his fellow citizens' civic conscience with stories based on real events.
Extra: the extended edition (also the first one to reach Romania) includes six additional minutes of footage (material previously available only as deleted scenes—Eriksson's interrogation, an additional scene with Dale Dye, and an unexpected Greg Henry cameo), an emotional interview with Michael J. Fox, and a half-hour Making Of in which De Palma is far warmer and more talkative than usual—and if you're wondering why, it simply means you haven't seen the film.
4 Stars out of 5 - 8 out of 10 !
Alin Ludu Dumbravă
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