War Photographer Reviews

Nominated for the 2002 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, Christian Fei's film is a somber yet gripping portrait of an extraordinary character: war photographer James Nachtwey. Widely considered one of the very best in the business, Nachtwey is also one of the most fearless. Following the example set by pioneering photojournalist Robert Capa, whose maxim "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough" introduces the film, Nachtwey often finds himself just a focal point away from potentially deadly situations in some of the world's most dangerous regions: Kosovo, Ramallah, Indonesia, Rwanda. The images he collects — primarily scenes of poverty and war, and all the grief and devastation they wreak on individuals — are unflinching in their honesty, heartbreaking in their compassion and often startling in their grim, sculptural beauty. For two years, Fei also followed Capa's dictum and kept close to his articulate yet modest subject as he sought out the hottest of the world's hotspots and threw himself into the fray, with cameras clicking. And what Fei's digital Betacam didn't catch, the tiny microcam installed right above Nachtwey's viewfinder did, recording the action as it unfolds: a grief-stricken mother in Kosovo throws herself on her son's coffin; rock-slinging youths are tear-gassed on the ramparts of Palestine; an impoverished Indonesian family living on the gravel between the railroad tracks; a group of Indonesian sulfur miners coughing and gagging as they breathe the noxious gases that emanate from what must surely be an entrance to hell. Strongly at odds with the popular image of the garrulous war correspondent, Nachtwey comes across as a mild-mannered, introspective man who doesn't shy away from asking himself the hard questions: As a commercial photographer, do I benefit from the suffering of others? Can a photograph really help put an end to war? Through Nachtwey's own carefully considered ruminations and interviews with his colleagues (CNN's Christiane Amanpour is on hand to offer her personal thoughts), Frei assembles a fascinating profile of a deeply humanistic artist who, in spite of all that he's witnessed, remains surprisingly idealistic, and retains an extraordinary faith in the ability of images to communicate the truth of the world around him. (In Enlgish and German, with English subtitles)