Just finished watching Control Room on DVD. Given the recent news story about President Bush maybe joking with Prime Minister Blair about bombing Al Jazeera, the cinema-verite style documentary seemed quite relevant. Yes, it's biased. Yes, the director is obviously leaving something out--and luckily, on the DVD, she put some of it back in. The outtakes consisting of deleted interview snippets are almost the best part. Because in those snippets the interview subjects--charming, educated, sophisticated, Westernized Arabs--admit that they don't believe that what Osama bin Laden does is terrorism (or, if it is, then Bush and America are also terrorists). Yet, one of the protagonists admits that he wants his children to study in the USA--and then stay to live...
The paradoxes and complexities of the Arab mind are on full display. On view as well are the shortcomings of the current American way of war confronting the realities of the Middle East. Lieutenant Josh Rushing, a Marine Corps press attache, is simply outclassed by the media types. He can only repeat talking points, denying that there is a US occupation because America didn't raise a flag. Hassan Ibrahim tells him, "But you are occupying Iraq." Josh won't admit it, till the end. It's pathetic, and evidence of the screw-ups coming from the top. Since Americans are "liberators" they can't be "occupiers"--ridiculous on its face, especially since in Germany and Japan the US occupied the countries for many years.
The killing of an Al Jazeera correspondent in Baghdad would make a good plot for a mystery film. It is unclear what happened, even though much of it was broadcast on TV. Was he doing something he shouldn't have been? From his look at the camera right before he was bombed, one gets the sense that he didn't want to be in the midst of the battle, that he didn't want the cameras to turn to cover the battlefield, and that perhaps there had been an agreement between the TV network and the military to that effect. Or, maybe not. Certainly, his last look had a haunted quality.
Or maybe that's reading too much into it, after the fact. Maybe somebody just heard Bush's joke--and went to work calling in air strikes?
Jehane Noujaim has made a propaganda film, but a very good propaganda film (unlike Michael Moore's crude agitprop). It comes from a Pan-Arabist perspective. It is not reality. It is not truth. And it is certainly not the whole truth, but it may very well be a true account of how many Arabs saw the Iraq war.
For that, we should be grateful.
