by Tan Copsey
Here in the UK the BBC has just begun screening an incredibly interesting two part drama –Tsunami: The Aftermath, which explicitly deals with events in Thailand around the boxing day tsunami of 2004. The screening of which has provoked some debate in the offices of openDemocracy about the role of film in portraying disaster. Here I recount my own opinions relating to this film, and compare it to recent cinematic portrayals of that other great disaster of our time, 9-11.Writing about United 93 and World Trade Center, recent filmic adaptations of that fateful day, Daniel Mendelsohn noted how weak they were in real political content. What is particularly interesting about Tsunami is that it doesn’t shy away from asking the big, perhaps unanswerable, questions. Tsunami is awash (sorry) with politics, it exposes the all too human inadequacies of the authorities, both British and Thai, and questions the desire of audiences to be entertained by mass death through the often callous figure of a British journalist, brilliantly played by Tim Roth. Indeed it is very hard to feel comfortable watching Tsunami, but that’s arguably one of its strengths. Honesty about disaster seemingly demands a provocation of the audience. Although this leads one quite naturally to the question – should we be watching this at all? Here comes the mildly controversial bit - I would argue Tsunami answers this question by being both brutal and honest. It is OK to film such events if in filming them you demand participation and thought from the audience, if you raise difficult and politically pertinent questions. This mirrors an argument, made so often by we of the left, that one must be honest about the casualties of war in order to understand and hopefully prevent it.The second part is yet to screen, but tantalising trailers have suggested it will deal with broader issues relating to prevention and management of disasters – something the 9-11 films are also yet to do. All of this also begs the question what kind of films will they make about Iraq? Recently Mark Danner described Iraq as the ‘the war of the imagination’, what Tsunami, World Trade Center, and United 93 serve to demonstrate is that the Iraq war will continue long after the Americans decide to ‘cut and jog’.
Picture copyright: BBC.
