Graphic war film with a focus on photography
Dead to Rights is a traditional war film. War movies are not my usual cup of tea, but as a photographer myself, I was interested in the photographic element of the story.
Honestly, there’s a lot I could say about this film but won’t, because that critique is more of war films as a genre rather than anything special about Dead to Rights. The only thing I will note here before talking about the photography element of the storyline, is that I believe accusations of propaganda against this film are a bit redundant. All war films are propaganda. It doesn’t matter whether you’re watching Dead to Rights or Gallipoli, you can’t expect the genre to have no political motive.*
The initial drawcard for me was how Dead to Rights depicted the use of photography in war and atrocities. A lot of films I’ve watched that feature photographer characters normally position them as a truth-teller. One example that comes to mind given its narrative similarities is The Photographer of Mauthausen (Spanish, 2018) which tells the story of real-life Spanish concentration camp prisoner, Francois Boix, who took photographs at the camp, the negatives of which he hid until liberation and were ultimately used to prosecute the Nazis.
Dead to Rights was a little different because, while it had a photography-as-truth protagonist, it also used the Japanese military photographer as a foil. Although not delicately handled, I at least appreciated that the film attempted to go beyond the usual narrative of photography-as-truth. Even the Chinese characters seemed less interested in journalistic style documentation**, and more so in using the photographs as an act of resistance.
But all in all, I think the film did ultimately fall back on the simplistic photography-as-truth trope. It was made clear that scenes in the film were derived from the photographic archive of the Nanjing massacre. This also meant that that the film ended up trapped, I suspect willingly, in a paradox that Susan Sontag describes of war photography:
“The photograph gives mixed signals. Stop this, it urges. But it also exclaims, What a spectacle!”
—
*Of course, propaganda films aren’t just limited to war films, although this genre is one of the more blatant forms.
**I should mention that, citing Sontag again, war photography as critical documentation – rather than as morale-boosting PR – didn’t really come into the fore until the Vietnam War.
Honestly, there’s a lot I could say about this film but won’t, because that critique is more of war films as a genre rather than anything special about Dead to Rights. The only thing I will note here before talking about the photography element of the storyline, is that I believe accusations of propaganda against this film are a bit redundant. All war films are propaganda. It doesn’t matter whether you’re watching Dead to Rights or Gallipoli, you can’t expect the genre to have no political motive.*
The initial drawcard for me was how Dead to Rights depicted the use of photography in war and atrocities. A lot of films I’ve watched that feature photographer characters normally position them as a truth-teller. One example that comes to mind given its narrative similarities is The Photographer of Mauthausen (Spanish, 2018) which tells the story of real-life Spanish concentration camp prisoner, Francois Boix, who took photographs at the camp, the negatives of which he hid until liberation and were ultimately used to prosecute the Nazis.
Dead to Rights was a little different because, while it had a photography-as-truth protagonist, it also used the Japanese military photographer as a foil. Although not delicately handled, I at least appreciated that the film attempted to go beyond the usual narrative of photography-as-truth. Even the Chinese characters seemed less interested in journalistic style documentation**, and more so in using the photographs as an act of resistance.
But all in all, I think the film did ultimately fall back on the simplistic photography-as-truth trope. It was made clear that scenes in the film were derived from the photographic archive of the Nanjing massacre. This also meant that that the film ended up trapped, I suspect willingly, in a paradox that Susan Sontag describes of war photography:
“The photograph gives mixed signals. Stop this, it urges. But it also exclaims, What a spectacle!”
—
*Of course, propaganda films aren’t just limited to war films, although this genre is one of the more blatant forms.
**I should mention that, citing Sontag again, war photography as critical documentation – rather than as morale-boosting PR – didn’t really come into the fore until the Vietnam War.
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