Geneva Convention

I have copied Grand's Death and the Maiden initial post here on IMDb and started it as a new post because I think it is thought provoking.. and worth discussion despite other elements of censorship by audiences towards the director:

I am reacquainting myself with Death and the Maiden this week because of an appalling storyline in Day 4 of "24," in which the son of the Secretary of Defense is being tortured by CTU ("Counter-terrorism Unit") with the Secretary's permission because the boy might know something about terrorists who kidnapped his father and sister while they were visiting him at his home. He might also know absolutely nothing about what happened. He refuses to cooperate with the CTU thugs, however, but whether out of guilt, misplaced loyalty, or a stubborn refusal to capitulate to terrorist demands (even terrorists hiding behind American flags), no one knows. As Dr. Miranda says in Death and the Maiden, "How can I confess to something I haven't done?"

It remains to be seen if the character had any complicity in the kidnapping or not, but the gut-churning callousness of torturers was brought to the fore when his own (now-rescued) father, ordered the boy tortured again until he confesses to something.

It is surely time for Fine Line to re-release Death and the Maiden in the USA!



(I wonder if others have noticed that Dr. Miranda shares his name with the man whose torture by Arizona police gave birth to "the Miranda rights" Supreme Court decision? As the Royal Fusiliers go on trial for torturing civilians in Iraq and John Ashcroft defends the right of the U.S. government to torture Americans in Guantanamo, let it not be forgotten, by the way, that as recently as 2000 the Rehnquist Supreme Court ruled that not even an Act of Congress could overturn "Miranda and its progeny": http://www.aele.org/miranda.html.)





"In a democracy, the midnight knock on the door can be friendly." -- Gerardo Escobar

nova