Word: johnstons
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...Johnston, however, doesn’t consider the blend problematic. He wanted the film to be accessible and appealing to Americans who are not normally attracted to documentaries. This includes his father, a Vietnam veteran who “just doesn’t go see documentaries.” Furthermore, he claims, “all documentaries are manipulated to some degree…the truth was not just floating there for us to find...
...Johnston, seemingly aware of the criticism, claims that Larson’s personality was deliberately created to provoke. Johnston and Van Gregg were influenced by Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Michael Herr’s Dispatches, and the pseudo-documentary recreation of the French war in Algeria, The Battle of Algiers, and they do not consider their protagonist a hero, even though some of his opinions and emotions coincide with theirs. Rather, Larson’s preoccupation with the attacks on the U.S., his superficial knowledge of Afghanistan and his frequently cavalier attitude towards collateral damage...
When asked whether he feared that the public reaction to the film might stall over questions about the film’s “real” and staged episodes, Johnston said that it “might, to a certain degree.” But even if viewers are skeptical, he says he will have achieved one of his goals...
...Iraq dominates headlines and political conversation, director Christian Johnston would have us remember America’s other war—the increasingly peripheral conflict in Afghanistan. Johnston’s assessment of the original War on Terror largely echoes Sen. John Kerry’s recent charge that official assertions of stability and freedom in Iraq constitute a “fantasy world of spin...
Filmed entirely in Afghanistan, “September Tapes” investigates American progress in that nation and offers compelling evidence that claims of success there have been thoroughly fictionalized. Inexplicably, however, Johnston chose to fictionalize his exposé, creating an elaborate ruse in order to criticize what he seems to view as a far more elaborate—and more pernicious—ruse. The result is a bizarre and unconvincing distortion of otherwise mesmerizing original footage...