BOOK DATA D. Andy Rice, Political Camerawork: Documentary and the Lasting Impact of Reenacting Historical Trauma. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2023. $75.00 cloth; $34.00 paper; $33.99 e-book. 266 pages.
The trailer for Meghan O’Hara and Mike Attie’s In Country (2014) opens with archival footage of the Vietnam War accompanied by a voice-over whose source is quickly revealed to be that of a man dressed in fatigues. The contrast between the grainy look of the archival footage and the crisp audio of the interview signals a dual temporality that is central to the film’s subject matter: an annual reenactment of the Vietnam War in the Oregon woods. For D. Andy Rice, In Country’s critical potential is hampered by its observational style; by adopting, perhaps instinctively, a formal approach characteristic of much media representation of the Vietnam War, In Country inadvertently reproduces the commemorative ethics of the reenactment.
In his...
University of California Press