[yasr_overall_rating]
Rebecca is one of the world’s top war photographers. She must weather a major emotional storm when her husband refuses to put up with her dangerous life any longer.
As “1,000 Times Good Night” begins, Rebecca (Juliette Binoche), a war photographer, is on assignment in Kabul. She is dressed in a burkha to hide her identity from outsiders and finds herself in a small room full of men and women as they prepare a young woman who has volunteered to be a suicide bomber in the name of their cause. Rebecca is trying to tell the story of this woman’s life, right up to the point of detonation. She travels in the van along with her, continuing to take photos and when they reach their destination, she vacates the van hastily and without thinking, snaps a few more photos of her from outside.
This attracts the attention of two local police officers and while they question the driver, Rebecca slips away from the commotion. When she turns around, waiting for the expectant blast, she can’t help but notice the amount of people around the van, including young children. Without thinking, she immediately starts shouting at everyone to move away and then it happens. After having been knocked to the ground and covered in blood, she rises from the ashes and begins to take more photos. Then she collapses. After waking up in the hospital to see her husband Marcus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) standing above her, they make their way back home where they try to get on with their lives.
Naturally, Marcus is very distant and after some goading from Rebecca, he tells her that he and their two children live in constant fear, not knowing if she is ever going to return from an assignment or not. Naturally, for Rebecca, her job has been her life for so long but when she realizes that it is literally tearing her family apart, she knows what she must do and begins trying to adapt to a new life as a stay-at-home mother. Her and Marcus begin to reconnect as do her two girls and when she visits an old friend, he informs her that they’re looking for a photographer to cover an assignment in Kenya that is part of a peace-keeping mission.
At the behest of her eldest daughter Steph (Lauryn Canny), who just happens to be doing a school project on children in Africa, both mother and daughter, with Marcus’ approval, take the trip but as they are taking photographs, after Rebecca gives her her own camera, a band of rebels attack the camp and while Steph is gotten to safety, Rebecca stays behind to take more photos. As is to be expected, Steph retreats inside of herself and when Marcus finds out, he kicks Rebecca out of the house and tells her not to come home. Rebecca stays with some friends and searches deep inside of herself to see if she can really leave the life she’s always known.
The movie is unflinching in its look at the life of a war photographer away from the camera. When you’re in a war zone, capturing images that show the atrocities and inhumanity that most people will never experience, you know you’re doing a good thing by opening the world’s eyes. While Marcus doesn’t care about this perspective, Steph slowly attains that realization when she presents her project to her school. While walking them through the photos she took, watching the faces of the helpless and terrified people in front of her, makes her realize that they need her mother more than she does. She looks up to see Rebecca standing in the back with a knowing look on her face. Steph now has a degree of understanding she didn’t have before the trip and so do we.
The movie is slow-paced but always engaging. Juliette Binoche’s performance is fascinating and textured. She is weatherworn, years of death and destruction literally feet away from her, ingrained into her face. The movie is a semi-autobiographical recounting of director Erik Poppe who was a war photographer before he became a filmmaker and he does a tremendous job creating authentic drama, tragedy and moments of humor, many of them possibly coming from his own personal experiences. The film was shot in and around my hometown of Dublin, Ireland and it was great seeing so many familiar landscapes that I grew up with like Bull Island and Howth, a village and outer suburb of Dublin where I made my very first film at age 12.
In theaters and VOD October 24th
