POLITICAL FILM REVIEW
NEWSLETTER #221 OF THE POLITICAL FILM SOCIETY, INC.
P.O. Box 461267, Hollywood, CA 90046
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March 1, 2005
MEMBERS SELECT BEST POLITICAL FILMS OF 2004
Among the many films nominated for Political Film Society awards for 2004,
the following were voted the best:
Category Film Title
Director
DEMOCRACY Silver city
John Sayles
EXPOSÉ Kinsey
Bill Condon
HUMAN RIGHTS Hotel Rwanda
Terry George
PEACE Tae Guk Gi Je-Gyu Kang
CHILDREN IN A FORGOTTEN IRAQI REFUGEE CAMP IMAGINE THAT TURTLES CAN FLY
Turtles Can Fly (Lakposhtha hâm parvaz mikonand), a joint Iranian-Iraqi
production directed and written by Bahman Ghobadi, begins just before Gulf War
II at a refugee camp in Iraq's Kurdistan. The principal actors are children,
and the fictional story represents a slice of the lives of those who survive
under desperate circumstances. When the film begins, fifteen-year-old Agrin
(played by Avaz Latif) is contemplating suicide, and within a minute or two
after establishing the setting she indeed jumps to her death. Both the
attempted and actual suicide are fastforwards to the end of the story, however.
Flashbacks, which occur much later in the film, serve to illustrate what produced
the refugee camps: Saddam Hussein's soldiers not only drove Kurds from their
homes but raped Agrin, who gave birth to her now two-year-old son Rega
(played by Abdol Rahman Karim). Nevertheless, most of the film centers on Kak, a
thirteen-year-old Kurdish boy nicknamed Satellite (played by Soran Ebrahim)
because he procures and installs satellite dishes for Kurdish communities. In
demand for his unique technical skill and very limited knowledge of English, he
not only provides employment for some of the refugee children, who collect
defused landmines to exchange for cash or goods. He also serves as the de
facto leader of the community in which he lives. Agrin's armless brother Hangao
(played by Hiresh Feysal Rahman) is clairvoyant, correctly predicting when a
dangerous explosion will go off, when the Americans attack Iraq in 2003, and
when the war ends. Satellite then announces the actions that others should
take in response to the predictions. Whereas the political context dominates the
major events in the film, there is a human tragedy as well. Hangao very much
loves Rega, but Agrin does not; she wants to abandon Rega. One day, Agrin
ties up Rega in a remote location, but he breaks free and tries to return to
the refugee camp. When someone in the camp reports that Rega is in an area with
unexploded landmines, Satellite rushes to the rescue but a small landmine
goes off, wounding his foot. Although Satellite is soon up and about with
crutches to observe American troops passing by, he is unable to prevent Agrin from
jumping to her death. Why she does so is perhaps the most tragic part of the
film. Returning to the political aspects of the movie, the subtexts are very
powerfully stated. The title itself is a metaphor for liberation from death,
as the community is living in shells (tents), hoping for a way out while
along the border with Turkey; they are boxed in by barbed wire, landmines, and
sentry posts. Clearly, the Kurds are portrayed as having every reason to want
Saddam Hussein overthrown. Although they are allowed to watch television,
several channels are forbidden until the Americans march through, though the
response of older Iraqis to the tasteless fare that attracts teenage Americans
on MTV is to turn their heads away in disgust. The conquering Americans first
leaflet the tented community, using helicopters, to announce honorable
intentions and then appear as gallant conquerors, presumably en route to Baghdad or
perhaps to the oilfields in Iraq's Kurdistan, but their only apparent
contribution to the community is to watch the forbidden channels with those whom
they have liberated. That the Kurds are divided between Iran, Iraq, and Turkey
is mentioned in a matter-of-fact manner, but the story of human tragedies
befalling the Kurds does much to provide legitimacy to the possibility of an
independent Kurdistan; the director is an Iranian Kurd. The sight of Americans
marching heroically through the refugee village may also send a message to
Iranians who increasingly have drawn the conclusion that the current regime is
no better than the one under the Shah, but the fact that some landmines are of
American origin suggests that profits motivate Washington more than ideals.
The sight of an armless boy defusing a landmine with his teeth is perhaps the
starkest image presented of a country with millions of landmines and
thousands of orphaned children, many of whom have fewer than four limbs. The
depiction of all aspects of a refugee camp, where hundreds of children are doing the
work to keep the community alive, prompts the Political Film Society to
nominate Turtles Can Fly as best film exposé of 2005. MH
DOWNFALL EXPOSES THE LAST TEN DAYS OF HITLER'S SURREAL WORLD
In Downfall (Der Untergang), director Oliver Hirschbiegel presents a vivid
docudrama of the last ten days of the Third Reich, mostly inside Hitler's
Berlin bunker surrounded by the luminaries of the Nazi state. To achieve
historical accuracy, the script relies on Joachim Fest's Inside Hitler's Bunker: The
Last Days of the Third Reich and Traudl Junge's Until the Final Hour:
Hitler's Last Secretary (both translated into English in 2004). A touching
interview with Junge from an earlier documentary film ends the film, and Alexandra
Maria Lara, the actress playing her part in the film, provides a voiceover
prologue, which points out that she naïvely agreed to be Hitler's secretary from
early 1942 to April 30, 1945, when Hitler (played by Bruno Ganz) committed
suicide. The film provides many events that are familiar to historians and some
grisly details that filmviewers may not want to know about. We observe
Hitler's interactions with his top officials and generals, including a confession
by Albert Speer (played by Heino Ferch) that he disobeyed the Führer's order
to destroy the architecture of Nazi Berlin and second-in-command Josef
Göbbels's (played by Ulrich Matthes) steadfast devotion to Hitler as the latter
refuses to believe military intelligence briefings when the end is near. There
is a marriage ceremony in which Hitler and Eva Braun (played by Juliane
Köhler) exchange vows, and Göbbels is impassive as his spouse Magda (played by
Corinna Harfouch) poisons all their children so that, in her words, they would
not grow up in a world without National Socialism. While Russian artillery
draws closer, Hitler is still giving out medals for bravery and ordering the
execution of traitors. Around him, alcohol is increasingly consumed, and there
are even two wild parties. The surreal representation asks a familiar question:
Why did Germans, especially those who knew that Hitler was detached from
reality, continue to support and to obey him? Although broad academic theories
focus on such factors as national culture and state terror, the film suggests
several particularistic answers. (1) The primary explanation appears to be
groupthink, that is, the human tendency to fear the social consequences of
nonconformity. Even though military officers close to Hitler know that he is
treating German civilians as well as military personnel as expendable, nobody
wants to take responsibility for contradicting Hitler or forming a cabal to kill
him. (2) A second factor is paternalism, as the women in his life are so
infatuated by him that they give no credence to reports about imminent doom. (3)
Along with other uncritical adherents of Social Darwinism, Göbbels and
Hitler believe that they are doing the world a service by liquidating Jews and
so-called inferior peoples, and Hitler is even willing to have all Germans die
as a race because he believes that they are being proved inferior when the
army is incapable of withstanding the Allied military onslaught. (4) The
strength of a code of militaristic ethics can be inferred from the unquestioning
obedience of Nazi officers and officials, who follow orders blindly and prefer
suicide to cowardly surrender. (5) There is a complete absence of democratic
norms; according to Hitler, the discipline of the Bolsheviks will prevail over
effete democracies, and no character in the film suggests that decisions
should be deliberated within a group before being promulgated. (6) Cognitive
dissonance theory certainly applies, as Hitler responds to unpleasant
intelligence briefings by giving orders to nonexistent armies and by condemning as
traitors those who recognize military realities. In any case, the film cannot be
fully deconstructed. The mysteries will never go away, even though the film
ends by revealing what happened later to the main characters in the film (who
were mostly incarcerated by the Russians, later released, and are now dead).
Accordingly, the Political Film Society has nominated Downfall for best film
exposé of 2005, best film raising consciousness about the superiority of
democracy, and best film demonstrating the lunacy of war rather than peace. MH
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