The Battle of Orgreave was a powerful documentary about the reenactment of the confrontation between the miners on strike and the police more than 20 years ago. The documentary was easy to follow and I was impressed with how well-rounded it is. The documentary presented the views of the miners with a very careful and respectful approach. I felt like a lot of the ex-miners really got to say what they wanted to say only after 20 something years. The director Mike Figgis was specific about how he wanted things to be as true to the real event as he could be. Yet with all the heightened emotions, he was still able to control all the people to be respectful of each other. I think he successfully captured the mood of the battle, even though I didn't know about anything before watching this documentary, I feel like all the issues that need to be addressed were addressed.
The documentary is so successful partly because there are a lot of stuff still need to be resolved, people's emotions are still real after all these years. You can see the anger in their faces during the re-enactment. From all the interviews, I think they were happy that people's attention are brought back to the event to learn what actually happened since at the time, the news stations didn't report the correct sequence of events. The media aspect really shocked me, I have always thought of BBC to be a respectable source of news, but I guess I was too naive. There are always those things that were hidden in the past in every country. A documentary of this kind is important because it brings our attention back to those mistakes we made in the past, no matter where it was in the world.
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