But you come out more profoundly aware than ever of the gathering darkness of our current geopolitical moment, and more fervently grateful that there are torchbearers like Maria Ressa to lead us to the light. You may go in knowing little about her - perhaps just that she was one of the four “Guardians” (Jamal Khashoggi being another) to be named Time’s Person of the Year for 2018. Diaz’s pacy, engrossing, galvanizing film “ A Thousand Cuts” feel more like a political thriller than an off-the-cuff investigation into embattled journalism in the Philippines, but Ressa’s seemingly boundless energy, good humor and intelligence make her basically a power plant for the manufacture of inspiration in embattled times. Not to downplay the impressive craftsmanship that makes director Ramona S. Charming, hardworking, committed, compassionate, and earnest, she and this haunting, depressing, infuriating film are reminders that every time a politician slings mud at the "lamestream press" or talks about "fake news," what they're really doing is declaring war on facts - and on the people who still believe in the truth.It almost feels like a cheat, or an unfair advantage, to have such unfettered access to a documentary subject like Maria Ressa.
A THOUSAND CUTS MOVIE FREE
That's inevitable, because her dissection of the network of trolls and bots used to discredit and target the free press at large has been designed to discredit and target her, and her staff, and her publication. Yet Diaz stays out of the way of her own lens, instead giving a portrait in context of Ressa's valiant struggle for truth, and her determination to simply do the job even as she becomes part of the story.
A THOUSAND CUTS MOVIE SERIES
It's clear she's risking her life every time she goes to the office, just as opposition party candidate Samira Gutoc (briefly featured in a series of slightly disconnected asides) is risking hers every time she stumps in the markets and streets - and, it is apparent, as did Diaz in the act of recording these dissidents in their fight against dictatorship. "We stupidly believe that goodness wins over evil," Ressa tells her sister on the way to a press gala in New York - that scene one of many that shows how placing herself in peril at home was making her an international celebrity of the free press. All the while Ressa and her team - outwardly calm, inwardly too smart to not know what the long-term plan is - stayed true to the cause of journalism, covering Duterte setting himself up as the savior of the disenfranchised in the 2019 elections, even as he and his allies increasingly targeted the free press. These figures seem familiar because, as Ressa notes, American right-wing violent populism was foretold in June, 2016, when then-mayor Duertete swaggered and bragged and menaced his way into the presidential palace, and began a deliberate campaign of menacing the press, drug addicts, the poor - anyone who could be seen as a straw man enemy, and a tool to gain even more power. As Patricia Evangelista (an investigative reporter for Ressa's news site, Rappler), bluntly states, "He just offers not just change, he offers revenge."
A THOUSAND CUTS MOVIE TV
National Police Chief Ronald dela Rosa, a posturing "hard man" who justified mass murder under the banner of "the war on drugs." And, of course, President Duterte, who portrayed himself as the underdog outsider who would shake up politics and clean up the streets, who didn't just spitball about shooting someone on Fifth Avenue - he went on TV and bragged about killing three people in the last few months. There's pop star Mocha Uson, who weaponized her blog to slander legitimate news agencies, and ended up as presidential assistant press secretary. Diaz's rage-inducing documentary A Thousand Cuts, and the tools of this inversion have been test-driven in the Philippines before being imported to the Northern Hemisphere.Īlison Klayman flipped through the playbook with her 2019 portrait of Steve Bannon, The Brink: Here, Diaz shows the personalities that have defined the Philippines' radical shift to violent oppression. "Everything can be turned upside down," she warns in Ramona S.
It's been deployed across the world and the only one who seemed to see it coming is Filipino reporter Maria Ressa.
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