Thursday, November 25, 2004

another documentary

Even if you think it’s completely accurate and honest, Uncovered: The War on Iraq (Robert Greenwald 2004) is still likely to leave you feeling just the slightest bit dubious. Relying as it does on a lengthy parade of former CIA officers and analysts with a few diplomats thrown into the mix creates more an impression that they’re pleading their own case. “Hey, this debacle isn’t our fault. We gave the proper people or people connected to the proper people the properly dubious or well at least qualified statements that Iraq didn’t have any WMD. And oh yes, they’re lying but we didn’t.”

The thing is that it was perfectly clear at the time that the Bush administration was indeed fabricating a reason for war; just ask most of the civilized world starting with Canada and France. Uncovered instead presents technocrats discussing job details. Now certainly these are the people that have a good idea of how it worked and what happened but it tends--unlike oh say Fahrenheit 9/11--to leave out much of the context. Interviews with more journalists and politicians were certainly needed and perhaps even, gasp, an Iraqi or two.

There are other problems with Uncovered. I’m not sure what was the point to starting the film with a long stream of the witnesses identifying themselves--possibly to impress viewers?--but it did nothing except leave me wondering what, indeed, was the point. Are they going to sing “We Are the World”? Each person is always IDed later (except for a few voice overs) so this whole section should have been clipped. Then there’s the terrible choice in music. It sounds so much like the accompaniment to local TV news shows that I thought this was meant as a parody until it becomes obvious that it’s not.

The most troubling lapse is the portrayal of the war. Most of the film is somewhat haphazardly shot talking heads (complete with wildly varying audio quality) but come war time we get a series of crisp, elegantly done still photos. At best this is simply an astonishing aesthetic blunder but the overall tone is much worse. “The deliberate violation of moral and intellectual standards created staggering losses and harsh suffering for millions of people in both countries” instead becomes “Hey, look at the purty pitchers!” Most likely the point was to present striking images but when war becomes something of a minor inconvenience you have to wonder about the film overall.