The Troubles We've Seen (Marcel Ophuls, 1994)

 

Marcel Ophuls’ tragically underseen The Troubles We’ve Seen is a marvelously provocative work, knowingly untidy and digressive and sometimes downright eccentric, but all the more stimulating and debate-sparking for that. The film is subtitled “A History of Journalism in Wartime,” but it's far less linear and comprehensive than this might suggest: the overwhelming focus is on the then-current war in Serbia, and on Sarajevo in particular, with other conflicts mentioned in more fragmented form along the way. Ophuls structures the first part primarily around his own trip to Sarajevo and his observations and interactions there; the second spends more time on various ethical and practical issues, such as whether warzone journalists should travel in armoured vehicles for their protection, or whether that would primarily serve to distance them from realities and to over-align them with the military. In often jarring ways, Ophuls contrasts the stark (although, as is acknowledged, not entirely fun-starved) realities of the war-reporting game with the comforts of life in Vienna and Venice (a short distance and a whole world away from Sarajevo), and the imagery of war with various snippets of classic Hollywood, from Hawks to Holiday Inn. The film’s opening point (made eloquently by Philippe Noiret of all people) draws a comparison between Bosnia and WW2, and the degree to which moral and strategic failure can be attributed to lack of information; watched in 2023, comparable, desperately acute parallels between what’s shown and debated and the current situation in Ukraine arise at every turn. Which is to say that however dated the film may seem in some of its particulars (and, to some, further distanced by the relative focus on French TV personalities), it speaks no less strongly to the eternal issue of how to engage (that is, as something other than mere compliant, capitalism-friendly consumer) with media assertions on what we need and deserve to know.