The Bang Bang Club

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source: The Bang Bang Club

I avoided this film for a long time because it was set in South Africa and I thought it was going to be political. Instead it is more about the combat photographers that live and work in these zones, witnesses to all kinds of nasty things, but tasked with observing and taking pictures only. The film has a good cast, but considering it is based on a book written by two of the photographers - one played by Ryan Phillippe, it is strange that the most visible character is Taylor Kitsch's, who steals the show with his acting. The direction and writing of the film were a little bland, though, less ambitious than the subject of the movie. I wonder if it was intentional, as to show more of the perspective of the original book. Even so, we start with these musketeers of the camera, but we never understand why they got to doing what they're doing and so most of the time we couldn't care less what happens to them. The change comes at the end, when two of the group die and we are faced with the pain of their friends and loved ones, but it comes too late and on the background of Black people finding their children murdered and having to let photographers in to take account. It felt artificial and condescending, so that is why I rated this film merely average. Otherwise, an interesting story and word watching. One thing intrigued me: from the few IMDb comments for this film, there is none from South Africa, so they must have done something wrong with the movie.

The really successful thing about the movie is that the director apparently (I wasn't there to know how truthfully) managed to reproduce in a convincing, graphic manner the real atmosphere of combat photograph shooting. What Marinovich (and Silva) wrote down as separate accounts of the events, tensions and dangers of taking the most striking and memorable photographs, Silver just develops in well-organized scenes. Greg's crazy visit to the hostel - the step that brought him into the "club" and turned him into a world-renowned photographer - was particularly dramatic and colorful. Otherwise, the movie has not created any story of its own - it just has just patched up the highlights in Marinovich and Silva's book and bound them together within the loose frames of a dull and uninspiring story of the four "bang bang club" photographers meeting, working together and coping with the existential and ethical issues of their vocation. Perhaps Silver did not want to manipulate Marinovich's text; the outcome, however, is rather insipid and people who have just watched the movie and never read the book may very well miss the point.

This story of four photographers working in South Africa during the last days of the Apartheid is a moving and often morally challenging tale. Seeing these very different men maneuver through a blood stained country in a time of devastation and civil unrest sheds light on a period most would rather forget, bringing it to a new audience perhaps too young to remember the significance of it. These were days of change in South Africa, images that were sent out to the world and helped create mounting pressure on the Government to put an end to the injustice that was the Apartheid. These are photographs that changed the world and this film is an interesting insight into the lives of the men who opened the eyes of the Western world to the plight of the South African people. Driven by beautifully created characters, this film is brilliantly acted all round but it is Taylor Kitsch who gives the most poignant performance as Kevin Carter. Kitsch ultimately steals the show with his quiet intensity, bringing life to a tragic man who has seen too much. The growing despair of his character throughout the film is heart wrenching. It is not an enjoyable film to watch at times, the content difficult to stomach knowing that these people lived through these horrors, but it is well worth it. One of the best films I have seen in the past year, hands down.

The 'club' - a real life group of four white photographers - operated in South Africa during the difficult last years of the apartheid era in 1990-1994 when the white regime encouraged the Inkatha Freedom Party to attack the supporters of Nelson Mandela's African National Congress and appalling atrocities of black-on-black violence were committed. Two of the photographers won Pulitzer Prizes for their shots but all suffered psychologically and physically. The film is an adaptation of a book by the two surviving members of the 'club' written and directed by South African documentary film-maker Steven Silver and it was shot on location in Thokoza township south of Johannesburg. So there can be little doubt about the authenticity of the principal events and the verisimilitude of the settings. Somehow, however, the script and acting have a amateurish feel, so that the work is not quite as gripping as it should be. The movie reminds me of the 1973 work "Under Fire". Although the political situations are different - the 1973 film is about the civil war in Nicaragua - both films centre on the work of photographers in recording conflict and presenting it to the wider world and both explore how the motives and role of such participants can be complex and controversial. Even observers of dramatic political events cannot be neutral or passive.

Just a Grandmother in the suburbs, but so glad I found this excellent movie offered free by my cable company. From what some of the other reviewers have said, it would be well worth my time to get the DVD (and a new TV)for some details I missed and the extras on the DVD. I'll be looking up the book too. And the music is awesome. I do agree the sex/romance content detracted somewhat from the credibility of the film: 2 of the women did not appear to have any other life or function than fawning over their men. But isn't that always the way?