16 Feb Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (2009)

Fixing, after the Fact

Here is a project for film students: take this film, a loser, and make a great movie from it. I think I would add new footage about the hidden story here (the hooker), present the thing nonlinearly, shift the narrator and the stance of at least two of them and add a new score. We would have to add a lot of situated shots to add texture to the environment so that you cannot be sure that every single thing you see will be an essential clue.

I am convinced that this could be an important film because the idea is so well conceived.

We have the story the film presents, which I suggests can be repaired after the fact. It will feature a story about a DA who fixes stories after the fact. The details of both of these stories (the ones without and within the film) are that the power of the story is served by artificial enhancement. (The DA enhances his conviction rate by fabricating evidence, proved in photographic images.)

So far so good. These stories are carried by a third, another detective, this time an investigative reporter. He is trying to confound and reveal both the DA and the film‘s viewers by deceiving them. There are details here that mix his confounding of their ‘artificial‘ narrative enhancements with one he delivered in a previous movie and which is now threatened. This story is the one that I suggest be enhanced. It references a prostitute which is already in the zone of artificial narrative; this woman has been a co-conspirator in the same way the viewer is tricked into being.

There is more: we have a fifth detective (actually a sixth) who unravels everything at the end. She also is an investigator. She also is entrapped in a prostitution of sorts.

Pretty good, huh?

Posted in 2011

Ted’s Evaluation — 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

IMDB