Because it concentrates on first-person testimony while paying scant attention to this important physical evidence, I find The Stringer persuasive and even compelling, as I wrote earlier, but not conclusive. In my opinion, it fails to make an effective evidentiary case to support the charges it levels. […]
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So far in The Stringer it’s all he said/he said between advocates of two variant sentimental favorites: the young Nick Ut who (purportedly) took the photo and saved the girl vs. the lowly unsung stringer who had his glory stolen. Competing narratives with equally credible sources on both sides. […] Treated purely as dramaturgy, “The Stringer” is cinematic gold. If this came to you as a fictional Hollywood movie, you’d buy into its storyline in a minute. Which poses a problem in the documentary context, because a good story doesn’t have to be true. It doesn’t have to be credible in every detail. It doesn’t have to prove its case with hard evidence. It only has to be engrossing. […] I’ve tracked the uproar over The Stringer since it first became news. Watching all this unfold has evoked a number of ruminations — not just on that photo, the film, and the charges involved but on the forensic investigation of photographs as a project. […] It seems paradoxical to say that gentleness and joy are contained in Beuford Smith’s work, even at its fiercest, but the truth of that is perhaps his greatest accomplishment and the firmest possible foundation for the major body of work he has just begun — and, indeed, can at this stage hardly avoid — creating. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |