|
Nobody
The Great
is a story about ordinary people in an extraordinary
situation. Despite
the fact it was inspired by such dark subject matter
as the Stanford
Prison Experiment, the Milgram
Experiment and the treatment of prisoners at the Abu
Ghraib prison in
Iraq
,
it’s very definitely an irreverent, allegorical
tale, a comedy with a heritage that goes back to Life
of Brian, La
Cage aux Folles, Dr
Strangelove and beyond…
I
wanted to make a movie, a dark comedy, that explored a
world where things aren’t black/white, right/wrong,
a world where we don’t have all the answers… I set
out to make a movie that entertains (makes us laugh
out loud!) and also one that provokes thought and
discussion. In
this age of sedative television and political apathy I
wanted to create something that was a wake up call
that tasted more like milkshake than medicine!
This film can be enjoyed regardless of whether
or not you can see the politics being explored (I say
‘explored’ because it’s not a propaganda film
and there’s room for individual audience members to
find their own answers).
For
many years now I have been fascinated by the notion
that ‘ordinary people are evil too’, well not evil exactly but given the right kind of situation where new norms
are created, and we ‘the good people’ are
convinced of the justness of our cause (and the
depravity of ‘their cause – those people who are
not like us, who are other’),
perhaps anyone of us might behave as they behaved in
those experiments or even in Abu Ghraib..?
On
6
May 2004
,
the New York Times published an article (by John
Schwartz)
which kind of summed it up:
“Dr.
Charles B. Strozier, director of the Center on
Terrorism and Public Safety at John Jay College of
Criminal Justice in
New
York
,
said the prison guards in
Iraq
might feel that the emotions of war and the threat of
terrorism gave them permission to dehumanize the
prisoners.
‘There
has been a serious, seismic change in attitude after
9/11 in the country in its attitude about torture,’
Dr. Strozier said, a shift that is evident in polling
and in public debate. In the minds of many Americans,
he said, ‘it's
O.K. to torture now, to get information that will save
us from terrorism.’
Craig
W. Haney, a professor of psychology at the
University
of
California
,
Santa
Cruz
,
who was one of the lead researchers in the Stanford
experiment, says prison abuses can be prevented by
regular training and discipline, along with outside
monitoring. Without
outsiders watching, Professor Haney said, ‘what's regarded as appropriate
treatment can shift over time,’ so ‘they
don't realize how badly they're behaving.’
‘If
anything,’ he said, ‘the
smiling faces in those pictures suggest a total loss
of perspective, a drift in the standard of humane
treatment.’”
Politics
aside (!), I am fascinated by what we do when we make
a film - creating reality, a heightened reality on
screen, and it was important to me that we got
performances that we the audience would care about,
that we the audience would understand as real and
human. I
worked with some gorgeously dedicated, talented and
hardworking actors and crew and I think we created a
little bit of magic here.
Kara
Miller
|
|
Duration:
approx 90 minutes (not yet at final edit)
Genre:
Dark Comedy, Political satire, Farce
Process:
Colour
Aspect
Ratio:
1.1:85
Original
language: English
Country
of origin:
UK
Year:
2005
Formats
available:
35mm
prints, HDCAM, DigiBeta,
Beta SP
|
