"Iraq in Fragments": A Critical Review

Speaking of self-fulfilling prophecies and media images (see the previous post), have you seen this recent documentary called “Iraq in Fragments” directed by James Longley? (here)

Apparently, it has won tons of awards in the Sundance Film Festival and was also nominated for the Oscars. It was screened all across North America between November 2006 and April 2007. A few of us watched it last year. My immediate impression was: DISAPPOINTING - to put it politely. I jotted down below thoughts afterwards and shared them with a few friends.

Longley spent over two years in Iraq from 2003 for this documentary. He used the everyday, lived experiences of Iraqi people as a lens to tell a bigger story of the politics and experiences of factionalism in Iraq. The idea was great and the resources he had access to could have helped him knit an intricate and complex portrayal of the ground reality. Like it is in reality. But, that did not happen in this documentary.

The documentary focused on the obvious three communities in Iraq – the Sunnis, the Shias, and the Kurds – and how their 'differences' - political and to a lesser extent ideological - are disparately opposite and irreconcilable. No mention of commonalities among them - like shared culture and religion, and intermarriages, friendships, and tribal relations - that cut across these factional lines, which are widespread in that society according to many scholarly studies.
A logical question that may come to any critical mind is that if it's that bad, then how did these communities put up with each other over such a long history? Why did it become so bad recently? We get no answer to these questions. The documentary made no attempt at presenting the current escalation of violence in its political and historical context. Consequently, an uninitiated viewer only gets an essentialized image of the ‘differences’ that appear as irreconcilable among these three communities.

For the Kurdish and Sunni cases, the documentary focused on the lives of young boys and people surrounding them. You see innocence, suffering, feelings, emotions that are real and that any viewer can relate with. But in the Shia case, the focus was instead on a leader of a militia, his ideological views, rhetoric, leadership, etc. How are all these experiences comparable in the first place? Moreover, we see no representation of female experiences in the current turmoil. Such an imbalanced portrayal furthers the differences in the minds of the viewers and presents a division of Iraq as the only ‘natural’ solution.

A friend, who was with me at the screening, drew my attention toward an underlying and very subtle depiction of hypocrisy in all three stories in the documentary. The documentary seem to depict that what the adult say and what they actually want are two different things. It reminded me of the imagery of 'cunning' Arabs that cannot be 'trusted' which runs deep into the Orientalist discourse (remember the movie, "Lawrence of Arabia"). I thought that was an interesting observation.

I cannot help but think that this documentary was made with a specific kind of anti-war argument in mind: Iraq is a mess now; it may have been in a better state before we got in. The people are messed up, you cannot solve their ideological and political differences, they would keep fighting with each other. The best option for us is to get out as soon as possible. The reification of 'fragments' serves well for this argument.

Here is the screening schedule, fyi.

PS. I shared the above thoughts with a few friends. One friend wrote back with some insightful thoughts. Below, I copy a couple of points from my response to that feedback.

- My primary concern was about the simplistic portrayal of reality and the reification of identities in this documentary. I suspect that it is produced for the consumption of a specific kind of anti-war argument. This portrayal could also contribute to a policy consensus on the division-of-Iraq solution, although I don't think this was Longley's intention or his personal politics. But it works to that effect, in my opinion. My general argument is that no depiction of Iraqi reality in the US is without consequences on the future of Iraq. It would be too naive on the part of the director to simply think of portraying the reality with 'objectivity' and no concern for the political consequences. I don't think he is that naive. And I think that these kinds of documentaries, columns, blogs on Iraq all have profound effect on policy and politics.

- On my friend's point about the passive form of documentary structure, which avoids the issue of causal connection; that is, who is responsible. My comment: Reality is much more complex than the simplistic three categories Longley presents in his documentary. His documentary starts with a Sunni in Baghdad expressing that they were better off under Saddam. A particular kind of focus on a specific Shia Militia (them beating up people who sold alcohol; their militant might; how they want to control the country using the channel of elections) in the second section, following the Sunni case, would automatically make the viewer think that Shias have replaced the previous dictatorship. They are the new dictators now (something the an American-Muslim scholar recently claimed on his blog, calling the top religious authority in Iraq a new dictator after Saddam). True, Longley does not venture into tracing the cause-effect, i.e. who is responsible, what is the political and the historical context. But the structure of this documentary and its content inevitably leads an uninitiated viewer into make these causal connections, if un-intentionally. Documentary is a form of art, and art touches hearts and minds at a deeper level.

The simplistic causal connection that's coming off at the moment could be averted even in the passive documentary form, by presenting the complexity, the confusion, the contradictions, which is what the ground reality is. Why does the portrayal have to be in the neat, simplistic three categories? Does Saddam or ex-baathist represent all Sunnis and a particular Militia all Shias?

If Longley's aim was to present 'the other side of the story' or the 'actual experiences of people' or 'through the lens of their experiences a larger story', I don't think he did a good job at any of these. Hence, my disappointment.