Apologies for my lack of posts recently, my dissertation has evolved into a crying, needy and sometimes aggressive baby that needs constant attention. Only 2 months to go...
I read about this film yesterday on the BBC College of Journalism website, where producer Steve Anderson wrote that the film was transmitted 19 days after commission. That's a seriously fast turnaround. For someone interested in the physical making of films and the people that make them, this was something that really caught my eye - how on earth did they manage to get a team together, fly them out to South Africa, get all the interviews and then edit it all together to make an hour long film in 19 days?!
It seems that the team were picked because of their experience in fast turnarounds. They all jumped on a plane to Cape Town, and by using their contacts from the Dispatches programme on the Anni Dewani murder case, managed to pull together the people they needed to have worthwhile content for the film.
The documentary is led by Rick Edwards. I was a bit dubious about this choice - all I can see Rick Edwards doing in my mind is Tool Academy, but to his credit he was actually pretty good, and well placed and knowledgeable about Oscar due to his coverage of the Paralympic Games in the summer. He's also the new face of BBC Free Speech programme, perhaps suggesting his presenting of shows like Tool Academy are over... (I actually loved that programme - don't judge me).
The first few minutes were a bit hard - there were clips of Reeva on the reality TV show shown in South Africa a few days after she died, with the permission of her family. It weirded me out a bit, as it always does when there are people brought back to life on screen. It felt quite raw, especially when Reeva was talking about leaving something memorable behind 'on your way out'.
The story of this incident is arguably the 'biggest story to come out of South Africa since the release of Mandela 20 years ago' and the press coverage reflects that. In the confusion over whether he is guilty of murder, or the victim of a tragic accident, Heat Magazine (ironically) is the voice of reason. The editor argues that the suspicious incidents before Reeva's death, and Oscar's apparent 'dark side' doesn't make him capable of murder. Innocent until proven guilty.
The documentary, to my knowledge, presented all the information surrounding the case pretty fairly. It spent a long time on Reeva herself, placing her in the celebrity social circles and calling 2012 her 'breakout year'. This made the account all the more tragic - for once the focus was on Reeva for a bit, not Oscar (although the millions of references to her being beautiful started to annoy me - just because she was beautiful doesn't make her death inherently more tragic).
The focus did eventually move on to Oscar and the events of that night, and the account of what happened seems pretty weak. It's only to be expected though - the defence and prosecution cases appear to be a bit of a mess. The film doesn't actually answer the question 'What Really Happened?' and doesn't conclude either way in true BBC style, but then I guess that anyone expecting it to would have had some seriously high expectations. An interesting part was when Rick visited students at a Law school, who gave their opinions about the case. Noticeably, they spoke about how quick South Africans were to assume his guilt in premeditated murder. I wonder whether this is because of a general fixation on scandal and a preoccupation with violence in South Africa, or whether they believe his alleged 'dark side'. They didn't have a problem with worshipping him when he was a hero...
Credit where credit's due - a pretty damn good documentary considering it's turnaround. It's impressive that they managed to gain interviews with so many of the couple's friends - I would have thought that it's nearly impossible to gain access due to the crazy global attention.
Jury's out on Oscar Pistorius though.... although that catchy ending doesn't even work, there will be no jury at his trial. Damn.
No comments:
Post a Comment