Rather than a sneaky, smirky post on this under my Halloween thread, Hubert Sauper’s documentary Darwin’s Nightmare deserves its own focus. Ostensibly the title comes from the ecological fuck-up extraordinaire in Lake Victoria, where the introduction of the Nile Perch–while economically a boon–has been an environmental disaster, decimating other fish species. But, as noted, these fish created a booming fish export industry in the surrounding cities and villages…
… and the nightmare is really the devastation wrought by global trade. Sauper’s film is visually stunning and devoid of what he calls (in an interview on the disc) the journalist’s sense of ‘truth.’ Instead, the argument bubbles up out of the wrenching images and testimony along the way. This is like the vicious flip-side of the also-excellent Mondovino, both films sharing a sense of emergent narrative. Nightmare, however, is a more visually arresting (terrifying) film.
And in the extras there is a short film by Sauper even more horrifying–Kisangani Diary began as a devastating indictment of the neglect of the Rwandan refugees en route to and at a camp in the Congo. It transforms, however, into a vision of massacre–as almost all of the residents Sauper shot were killed by forces (of the then-new Democratic government). None of the killing happens on film–but the images, stories, depictions are no less horrific. This was powerful filmmaking, and enormously moving.
Both are recommended. Now I’m going to scurry back to cheap sleazy horror, as a respite.
Okay, I am still on a break from sleaze.
I have a feeling many of you’ve already seen–or have queued–Charles Ferguson’s doc on the failures of the post-war planning for Iraq No End In Sight, and I imagine what I could say wouldn’t break any new ground. It’s a great, great documentary–exceedingly clear and effective, very well-structured and shot. And despite having read so much about events there, I was still astounded by the levels of incompetence.
Years ago I read Halberstam’s book on how “the best and the brightest” could have gotten Vietnam so thoroughly wrong, and it’s often been my assumption–borne out in not a few critical commentaries–that the analogy with the Iraq situation is worth examining. Watching this doc, I’m not sure the analogy makes much sense at all. The key distinction is that McNamara et al. buried themselves in analysis, never questioning the paradigm let alone the facts on the ground. You get the sense that the neo-cons don’t even bother with analysis–there is merely faith; they make Stephen Colbert seem more like a ventriloquist than a satirist.
You also leave the documentary wondering how such critical interrogation might be useful if it came out during, rather than some years after, the drum-beating rush to war.
I just watched ‘No End in Sight.’ I have watched so many documentaries about Iraq that they begin to blur together. And I honestly have no real objectivity, so great is my anger towards this war and the people who started it. As a result, it is hard for me to separate out what makes a good documentary on this subject and what makes a mediocre or a crappy one. This one does seem to stand out, though. As Reynolds says, it is very clear so that you are taken step by step through the decisions that contributed to this disaster. There is this stunning point-counterpoint as the director gets two of the principals to respond to each other (separately) on the question of disbanding the Iraqi army. The talking heads are almost all people who became critics of the policies followed (most of the proponents declined to be interviewed), but they seem exceptionally smart.
In fact, if I have a criticism it is that the documentary provides a narrative in which Americans could have saved Iraq. I don’t know if that is true or not, but the argument is very clear: the invasion itself was not fatal, but the incompetence of postwar reconstruction was. Of course, this is a counter-factual. But it allows former pro-invasion journalists, like George Packer, to join in the criticism, blaming the coterie of Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz et al, for stupidity and arrogance. The documentary also ends with a line from an articulate young Marine lieutenant that, surely, this is not the best that America could do. The implication being that the invasion would have turned out better if smarter people had been in charge. Maybe, maybe not. But it is an interesting narrative.
I agree absolutely with Chris’ point about the might-have-been wishful thinking underlying No End. I longed for as focused a depiction of the people who did resist the rush to war, and how their analyses were casually and/or ruthlessly ignored. I wondered if that might not be a rhetorical strategy? Where a Michael Moore might rush in with a clear anti-war message, at least some of this film’s power stems from the way it seems to emerge from the Damascus conversions of so many former believers… which doesn’t forgive the absence of any serious anti-war discussion, but does perhaps open the film up for broader audiences?
Is it just me or is this Democratic primary starting to feel like a bloody, fucking slasher flick? OK, I like Obama. I believe he will surround himself with smart people, and I’m naive enough to buy into his message of optimism and hope. That being said, a few months ago I would have been just as happy if Hillary pulled out a win. I actually went into this thing a Hillary fan, but I got caught up in the fever. Now, I see her or her husband on the screen and I flee in horror. She makes Nurse Ratched look appealing. I swear, if she wins, I’m probably going to vote for McCain. And there are weeks and weeks left! I’m feeling like a dead horse ready for the next beating.
jeff, how is your relationship with your mother?
I’m voting for Jeff’s mother. And by “voting for,” I mean fucking. Okay, that was wrong, and I apologize. I’m not fucking Jeff’s mother. She does, however, still have my vote.
And since you’re here, ashamed by my comments or just plain mad at me, I urge you to see those Sauper docs which started this thread.
i propose that whoever feels such strong personal revulsion towards hillary read robin morgan’s goodbye to all that part II. if you put yourself through it and still dislike hillary, fair enough. but it would be good to do one’s homework. the media is covering the clinton campaign with such obvious venomous bias, none of us can claim lack of contamination.
nurse ratched, though?! jeff!
And speaking of mothers and feminist responses to HRC, Slate has long had a good dialogue going around about this election (and many other concerns), and this essay is a pretty effective examination of the generational split among feminist, particularly feminist women’s, responses to HRC.
Challenges to the media portrayal are important; we ought to push back against many of the ways criticisms of HRC are compounded by such pervasive, persistent sexism. (Thanks, Gio.)
But I step back and also wonder: isn’t there much to be criticized in the campaign, stretching way back to when she was the presumptive, already-nominated-but-for-the-voting frontrunner last November, let alone the recent unpleasantness? My sense of the campaign is actually pretty far removed from mainstream media coverage–my sources for news are far more diverse, and can’t be so fully painted with that sexism brush.
And I might be tempted to say that it’s her surname, not her gender, that prompts my most gut-level reactions. But with less wit but more honesty, the truth is that Obama for me signals a potential break from the center-right hammerlock the Clinton machine and the Demo Leadership Council have had for too long on the party. I want to be shut of the Clintonian approach to party policy and partisan politics.
Does HRC take the rap for that? Sure… and it’d be unfair if it wasn’t offset by the tremendous capital the name has given her. (If any–really ANY–candidate was in a second-place position like her current one, behind in delegates, votes, money, states, at this stage of a primary–they’d be rushed off the stage. She’s still onstage because she’s got the Clinton brand.)
I will read your link Gio, but I must say I don’t feel strong, personal revulsion for her. I feel it for her campaigning tactics . . . her sense of entitlement and denial. Her being the first Democrat to pull out the Osama Bin Laden fear card, her husband’s oily unctiousness, her politics of division, her poorly managed campaign–a kind of caffeinated theatre of cruelty.
Yikes, Gio’s link is visited by a pretty astringent militant crowd (I don’t think any of these folks would recognize the Hillary they romanticize so fearlessly). Anyway, I read it and many of the comments. February 3 was a long time ago, but, really, Marilyn Monroe and Chappaquidic! Dispensing with Caroline Kennedy by reducing her to some sort of vulgar woman-girl with daddy issues (“Caroline’s longing for return of the father”)? Goodbye to “an era when parts of the populace feel so disaffected by politics that a comparative lack of knowledge, experience, and skill is actually seen as attractive, when celebrity-culture mania now infects our elections so that it’s “cooler†to glow with marquee charisma than to understand the vast global complexities of power on a nuclear, wounded planet.” Does HRC truly understand the wounded planet? Has she not traded on her celebrity as First Lady? Is Obama nothing more than empty spectacle?
i guess the venerable robin morgan didn’t blow your world, hey, jeff? haha
Hillary strikes me as a mainstream power player, despite all the ridiculous rhetoric, pro and con, that surrounds her. Many of the attacks on her are excessive and offensive but I have to laugh when the self-proclaimed “conscience keepers” of the world celebrate her as some kind of transformative force of nature, ultimately relying on the tedious claims about her knowledge and experience. I always want to see the republicans defeated and Clinton may be savvy and well-connected enough to do it. But, while there might be a few advantages to her win, the rules of the game aren’t going to be changed much.