Director takes issue with U.S. war films

May 23, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

CANNES, France

British director Ken Loach has a big complaint over American films about the Iraq War. They do not identify the real victims of the conflict, he said.

“We do have to remember that the prime victims are the Iraqis. They’re the ones who’ve suffered,” Loach told reporters Friday at the Cannes Film Festival, where his Iraq War tale “Route Irish” premiered. “If I could be a little bit contentious, it does disturb me a little when we see maybe films from America that see the main victims as American soldiers. And it disturbs me even more when films like that are then dedicated to the American military.

“Because, sure, they’ve suffered. But just think of the millions of Iraqis that are dead, the families destroyed, children mutilated, homes smashed,” Loach said.

Loach, a master of British social drama, said it was not a question of whether he and his collaborators would one day make a war-on-terror film, but what form it should take when they did. “This is the spirit of these days, isn’t it?” he said. “We privatize industry. We privatize railways, we privatize transport, we privatize health care, we privatize prisons, we privatize schools. Everything they can make money out of, they grab. So the logical consequence is privatized violence.