Dirty Wars: Oscar Documentary Challenge Entry #2

So, if your country kept you in solitary confinement for 17 months without even charging you with a crime, and after that confinement you spoke against your country, which led your country to target you for assassination, how would that make you feel? That should have been the lead for the next entry in my Oscar documentary challenge, but unfortunately, the plot was lost…

Of the five nominated documentaries, Dirty Wars seemed to be the entry that is not as shocking as it thinks it is. I’ve pulled some quotes from the movie, and if these comments on the war on terrorism indeed are surprising, then Dirty Wars may be what you need if you have just come out of a coma:

– After Jeremy Scahill, the investigative reporter at the center of this film (and who you may have seen on talk shows and cable news outlets), asks a question about lethal operations (aka drone strikes) to a government official, another government official off-camera says:

We can’t acknowledge that a lethal operation outside of a war zone has occurred.

The on camera government official eventually says the following (paraphrase):

There are almost like there are two laws… Americans would be extremely surprised if they knew the difference between what they believe a law says and how it has been interpreted in secret.

Scahill bravely goes to Somalia to find more information, describing Somalia as a testing lab for the future of war, and the future looks bleak. He interviews a Somali warlord, who has been used by the American government to interrogate “suspected terrorists”:

America are the war masters. They know (killing) better than me. They are teachers. Great teachers.

Scahill also says that “America has been trying to kill its way to victory” in the war on terror, but they have created more terrorists in a self-fulfilling prophecy. He also ponders on when a war on terror ever ends. Again, not revolutionary ideas or questions.

All this makes for a weird viewing experience. Everything you see should make you enraged, sad, and completely fed up with our government and its lack of respect for the laws and the Constitution it purports to uphold and protect. Scahill briefly returns home to the United States, and describes how unfulfilling “normal” life is after being out on “the front” of the war. But perhaps he and the director should have spent more time in his home country. He touches on the complete unresponsiveness of our Congress (again, no surprise there), and that the shows he goes on to discuss issues are more about being combative than actually thinking through the issues being discussed. But what about the outrage deficit, or is it outrage fatigue, that informed Americans have to be feeling? And that they have to be feeling when watching this movie? Our government and military has targeted innocent civilians in foreign countries where we haven’t officially declared war, and done their best to cover atrocities up or create suspicion about who they killed (kind of hard to do when it’s women and children). There seems like there is nothing to be done about a government that is creating its own problems, and has no problem crossing the line for “the greater good.” We sit helpless while our government targets and kills its own citizens with drone strikes in foreign countries without so much as a trial or even a specific description of the charges justifying his execution. Dirty Wars isn’t the first place I’ve heard of these things, and the problem with the documentary is that is doesn’t give the viewer something they can focus on, so that they can maybe get beyond the outrage fatigue, and feel like they or someone will be doing something about all of this. It is like Scahill and reporters like him are in a bubble where to them this is all news, because it should be, but the populace greets such news with a shrug and a “What can you do?”

This is not to say that Dirty Wars is a bad film. It finds its stride a little too late, with the last 25 minutes being what the director and Scahill should have spent more time on- how the killing of Bin Laden turned everything on its head, and what was once in the darkness became celebrated in the light, and created an expansion of the war on terror. The true heart of the film is the transformation of Anwar Al-alawki from moderate to extremist. Al-Alawki was a US Citizen who imprisoned for 17 months in solitary confinement without any charges being made against him. I would have started the film with him and ended it with him as well. I won’t go into too much detail, but what happens to him and his family truly is shocking and surprising. And for every US Citizen, it should sadden and frighten you as well.

My IMDB rating: 7 out of 10 (7.5 if that existed)

My Netflix rating: 4 out of 5 (3.5 if that existed)

Review of Oscar Nominated The Hunt (Jagten) now on Streaming

 

 

One might think that Netflix may not be that useful for the home viewer to make their own decision about who the winner should be. Netflix would seem even less useful, as a lot of nominees, if they are not still in the theaters, are only available on DVD. There is however one category where you can use Netflix streaming (almost) exclusively to decide what the best film is (more on that later this week). Jagten (The Hunt) (2012), now on streaming, has been nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. (The 2012 date can seem confusing, but I guess it qualifies for the Oscars because the 2012 is from a festival, and it was released in Denmark in January 2013).

Thomas Vinterberg wrote and directed this film. You may know him from writing and directing the Dogma film Festen (1998), which was criminally ignored by the Oscars that year, but received plenty of other awards and recognition. It also has earned its place at #222 on IMDB’s Top 250. Jagten is like a companion piece to Festen, looking at the flip side of sexual abuse, and how it affects someone who is falsely accused. VInterberg masterfully portrayed the hurt and suffering of a sordid and scandalous family secret in Festen; you felt the protagonist’s pain, delighted in the cathartic pleasure of bringing the evil in the family out into the light, and were shocked by the stubbornness of the family to see the truth. It presented the epitome of a family gathering gone wrong; we’ve all experienced an uncomfortable dinner, but not quite like that.

Jagten (The Hunt) taps into similar emotions just as effectively. People are just as stubborn as in Festen, and as ugly. Mads Mikkelsen (who seems to be in almost every other foreign movie on Netflix streaming) is perfect in the lead role, and I was also impressed by Lasse Fogelstrom, his son who believes his father is innocent. Jagten is a film to be experienced like Festen, so I won’t spend too much time discussing plot points. The synopsis on IMDB tells you all you need to know so I include it here: “A teacher lives a lonely life, all the while struggling over his son’s custody. His life slowly gets better as he finds love and receives good news from his son, but his new luck is about to be brutally shattered by an innocent little lie.” Just like Vinterberg’s previous masterpiece, the lie revolves around child abuse. Although this film covers some of the same emotional terrain as Prisoners (2013), it is not ambiguous in the innocence or guilt of the accused, and while Prisoners indulged in the vigilante impulse in order to question it, Jagten leaves no question about the barbarity and ugliness when a town lets emotion blind them to reason and rationality.

You will be angry, but largely sympathetic to most of the characters (the accuser’s father, for example). The ending of the film at first seem to not fit the rest of the film, and be uncharacteristic of VInterberg, and frankly unrealistic. But the last minute is perfect, and tempers the hopefulness that precedes it with a large dose of reality- that once allegations are out there, they never really disappear.

My IMDB Rating: 9/10

My Netflix Rating: 5 out of 5 stars