"War is partly madness, mostly insanity and the rest of it is schizophrenia!"
Don McCullin
McCullin is a feature length documentary film by Jacqui & David Morris on the life and work of photographer Don McCullin, who is most known for his hard hitting photographs of the conflicts in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s & 80’s. This film mostly covers Don's war photography, but also features a great deal of his work on poverty in post World War II Britain.
The first thing that stands out right from the opening titles, is the haunting score by Alex Baranowski. Music can make or break a documentary and this beautiful soundtrack does for McCullin what Antonio Pint's score did for the fantastic Senna documentary. I was glad to find the soundtrack for McCullin HERE on iTunes.
Another thing that struck me, was the amount of unseen film footage from the various conflicts featured in the film. There's no doubt the team that made McCullin did a huge amount of research and they should be congratulated on such a fine job of putting this together. The whole film is woven together with Don's superb black and white photographs, video footage and interviews with Don McCullin and Sunday Times editor Harold Evans.
Although the scenes of war are very graphic and show many mutilated bodies, including people flattened by tank tracks, I found the most harrowing scene was of a group of starving Biafran children. One trying to drag a smaller sibling up a concrete step by his or her skinny arm, the tiny body twisting as it's head bumps off the step.
McCullin is out now on DVD and Bluray and is unmissable! If you are a human (I'm assuming you are if you're reading this), then you need to watch this! In my opinion, this film should be used in schools to show the horrors of war!
[embed title="McCullin official UK trailer - in cinemas & Curzon on Demand from 1 January"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VWjo5XUIfw[/embed]