Movie Breakdown: A Thousand Cuts (Noah)
Pre-Screening Stance:
Though I am well aware of the crazily violent, misogynistic and increasingly dictatorial President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, I will admit to knowing next-to-nothing about the subject of A Thousand Cuts, Maria Ressa. But, hey, what’s a documentary for if not to open up this pea-brain a little?
Post-Screening Ramble:
Ramona S. Diaz has cobbled together an immense amount of fascinating footage to make A Thousand Cuts. It makes sense, the story of the Philippines and the story of the journalist Maria Ressa and her news organization Rappler and how they all collide with the strongman mentality and populist government of Rodrigo Duterte is both dense and fascinating. To try and capture the sprawl of it, the characters at play, the history, the importance of free press and the depth of damage a figure like Duterte can do to it – well, it’s a lot. And, in her attempt to capture every aspect of the story, Diaz manages to spread the film too thin, lightly hopping from subject to subject without ever landing long enough to really drive any point home. Ressa herself – a lifelong journalist who made the decision to make her home and the home of Rappler, in the Philippines – is a fascinating subject and her story, meant to root the film, feels sparse or one-dimensional. Same goes with Rappler, the individual reporters are given some amount of screen time but only in a limited context. There is no explanation of why they continue to push and push and push against the governing body of their home country. There’s a feeling in the film that the viewer should already know the back story – of Ressa, of Rappler, of even the conflict in the Philippines – and it creates a distance A Thousand Cuts never recovers from. Diaz does a great job of exploring the deadly absurdities of Duterte and his political party, but in the vacuum of information that is the rest of the film, it doesn’t mean much. There’s many, many stories to tell in A Thousand Cuts, but when you try to tell them all, you get a film as scattered as this one.
One Last Thought:
There are some great lines from Ressa in this film including “as America does, the world does.” You hear this and you see Rodrigo Duterte comparing his erection to the microphone on his podium and you think, “Wow, disgusting.” And then you turn on the television and the orange-haired fecal bloat that is the President of the United States is onscreen telling people to drink bleach and you think, “We’re screwed.”
