Movie Review
1000 Times Good Night
Duration: 1hr 57mins.
IMDB Rating: 7.1/10
Released: 24 October 2014 (USA)
Genre: Drama, War
Opening with a scene where a woman
is preparing for her own death, 1,000
Times Good Night, starts off with a
scene that would shock the onlookers
and make them run for the hills. Enter,
Rebecca (Juliette Binoche), one of
the renowned war photojournalists
in the world, capturing dangerous
and chilling images in the most dire
situations, all in an effort to shed light
on the real face of the modern war.
She is a photojournalist who wanted
to change something and normally
specialized in war photography,
even if it meant risking her life in the
process.
She documents a group of female
suicide bombers in Afghanistan and
accompanies one of the suicide
bombers to Kabul, where she gets
severely injured by the premature
detonation of the bomb. After this
incident in Afghanistan - the near-
death experience chronicling the
ritual of a female suicide bomber,
her husband Marcus (Nikolaj Coster-
Waldau) levels an ultimatum and
demands her to either give up her
dangerous profession or lose her
family that she counts on for being
there when she returns from each
assignment. He wanted Rebecca to
manage and take care of her parental
responsibilities in their perfect house
in Ireland and ditch her life as a “jihad
paparazzo”.
However, the conviction that her
photographs can have any kind of
effect on the world, continues pulling
at Rebecca’s purpose, making it hard
for her to leave completely. With an
offer to photograph a refugee camp
in Kenya, a place supposedly so
sheltered that her daughter, Steph
(Lauryn Canny), is permitted to join
her. Rebecca had already disclosed to
her little girl that she is grasped by an
unassuageable resentment. She is not
foreign to the knowledge of just how
much she risks every time she throws
herself into the fray.
Binoche is one of the most talented
and is one of the actors who can
pass on different clashing feelings
of on-screen characters with just a
solitary look. With a bewildering
straightforwardness, she vanishes into
the reality of her character.
As Rebecca takes the sensational
pictures, showing the reality of Jihad,
the opening sequence in Kabul takes
a tense overtone and it indeed is
a promising start for a drama. But
Binoche’s performance – tiresomely
radiating martyred integrity – is
mannered and self-conscious, and her
character’s professional work is naively
imagined.
These glossily photographed
domestic interludes resemble a
high-end magazine spread in which
48 CLASSICS
the camera slavers over images
of virtuous, beautiful people
savoring the good life. You have
the impression that, to a degree,
Rebecca’s hazardous work is a form
of atonement for the good fortune
that she feels she doesn’t deserve. In
“1,000 Times Good Night,” Rebecca,
a celebrated, morally self-righteous
war photographer, hooked on risk-
taking, leads two lives that are in
continual conflict.
What makes “1,000 Times Good
Night” more than a dramatic essay
on wartime journalism is Binoche’s
wrenchingly honest portrayal of a
conscience-driven woman, with a
mixture of guilt, nobility and self-
importance, reckoning belatedly with
her destructive impulses. Her final
challenge is a trip with Steph to the
Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya to
help her daughter gather material
for a school project on Africa. On a
journey that she is assured involves
no risk, a surprise attack on the camp
puts them in harm’s way, and Rebecca
disobeys orders and compulsively
rushes into the melee.
The movie brings in, then wisely
drops, a half-baked subplot about
possible government censorship
of photojournalists. Shot with a
gorgeous eye, the filmmakers aren’t
afraid of lens flare or overexposure
to add an ethereal beauty to horrific
circumstances of which we are bracing
for impact.
Urvi Bareja
[email protected]
Urvi grew up in New Delhi, India. She
is always fascinated by literature and
photography. In her spare time, she enjoys
eating good food and watching web series.