Landmines Documentary

Dennis O’Rourke conveys strong messages about the use of landmines in his documentary, Landmines a love story. The director reveals the views of the Afghani people towards the weapon through many uses of obvious and also subliminal techniques. Usually undetected by an audience, the music plays a major part in how the audience is shown the issue of landmines. Jumping between scenes that seem to contradict each other, O’Rourke sends his message home with juxtaposition. The irrelevant scenes throughout the documentary appear to show two sides of an argument, but they actually follow the path the director is trying to get them to take. The audience, despite being spoken in a foreign language, the film is for western audiences, particularly Americans. Opening with George Bush’s speech about Afghanistan, the viewers are soon under the influence of music effecting their emotions towards the issue.
When shown scenes of ladies making landmines and bombs, the music is sort of suspending and also pretty creepy, this music continues on into the scene where the school children are learning about the mines in their normal classes. The music shows that landmines are dangerous and should be avoided without actually saying so; it also helps the juxtapositions to have more effect on the audience.
Juxtapose Throughout the film, the viewer is positioned to watch a moving scene about how landmines affect many people, and then shown a mine being laid, or created. This makes the spectators make their own decision if what they are seeing is right, but they are pointed towards the director’s view subconsciously. Landmines are portrayed as bad weapons of mass destruction by O’Rourke and the scenes that show landmines are severely edited to show they are bad even if they don’t seem to, these are often the scenes used in the juxtapositions.
Russians laying mines is a recurring scene that is used throughout the documentary. These scenes are often played after one conveying that landmines