Iraq in Fragments Movie Review
Iraq in Fragments Review
Excellent
Rating: NR
2006
Cast & Crew
Director : James Longley
Producer : John Sinno, James Longley
Screenwriter :
Starring :
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A story of Iraq told in tones both wondrous and horrible, Iraq in Fragments is
a stunning portrait of a country trying to pull itself back together after the
system shock of the American invasion -- sometimes succeeding, often not. A
compilation of three stories dealing with, respectively, the Sunnis, Shiites,
and Kurds, James Longley's unique vision benefits from its multiplicity of
viewpoints, ruminating on its characters' lives instead of encapsulating them
into some larger thesis. Although as informative as the best non-fiction film,
this is less a documentary than a ravishingly photographed visual poem, one in
which helicopters eternally buzz overhead and there is always a column of smoke
climbing into the sky from some point in the distance.
Longley spent two years immediately following the 2003 invasion amassing over
300 hours of footage, which he whittled down into this short, sharp narrative.
The amount of time he spent in the vicinity of his subjects is almost instantly
clear, as they act as though he isn't even there. Longley's camera floats
through the crowded city streets and amid the knots of people like an observing
ghost, insinuating itself into the action without leaving even a ripple. This
is especially true in the first segment, "Mohammed of Baghdad," a Dickensian
slice of life following a poor 11-year-old who's apprenticed himself to a cruel
shop owner who alternately threatens to fire him for leaving to go to school
and then berates him for not learning how to read. Mohammed's narration speaks
plaintively of pre-invasion Iraq, its beauty and calm -- for contrast with the
chaotic present of trash-strewn streets, Longley includes his own footage shot
in Baghdad before the war -- while the old men in the shop complain bitterly of
the present-day entropy: "Today is better than tomorrow."
The most disturbing element of the film is the second, "Sadr's South," which
inserts Longley's camera into the Shia enclave of Naseriyah. We're privy to the
denunciatory speeches and passionate demonstrations, all fomented by Moqtada
al-Sadr (whom Longley seemed to be able to get closer access to than just about
any other Western filmmaker or journalist) as he agitated for more political
power in the shifting sands of a new democracy. In a Taliban-like spasm of
fundamentalist repression, Sadr's masked gunmen go tearing through the
marketplace, beating and "arresting" merchants they claim were selling alcohol.
The hot mess of it all, with the fervid proselytizing and never-ending
agitation for violent action, gives one a neatly effective visual definition of
what happens when Pandora's box is opened.
Not far away in the north of Iraq -- a place that might as well be a different
country, and to its residents, basically is -- is a setting of comparative calm
and tranquility: Kurdistan. "Kurdish Spring" is the least structured of the
film's three stories, following a young boy who desperately works and pines for
good grades in school so he can become a doctor. Compared with the intense
ferment of the Sunni and Shite areas further south, the Kurdish region is calm,
controlled, and quite happy, all in all, about the invasion. While men grousing
in Baghdad during the first segment all believe that the invasion was simply
the U.S. making a naked grab for their oil supplies -- the Kurds in the last
story are quite clear about their happiness over the U.S. delivering them from
Saddam, one of them saying, "The future of Iraq will be in three pieces." It's
the most gorgeous and strangely (given how much better things are going here
than elsewhere) melancholic of pieces, all sharp-hued sunsets and ravishing
vistas. Longley isn't trying to instill a sense of hope here, though, just as
the previous segments weren't designed to push a viewpoint -- these are but
lives presented as simply as possible, and often on their subjects' own terms.
It's a cliché, but the thing that Iraq in Fragments does best is to show that
in the midst of a chaotic occupation and insurgency, life does go on; in a
fashion.
What Iraq in Fragments manages is to take the rather banal assertion that even
in the midst of a chaotic occupation and insurgency, life does go on, and turns
it into something quite the opposite of banal.
Don't go to pieces on us.
