Probably the most irritating unintended consequence of the terrorist attacks of Terrible Tuesday in New York City and Washington has been the increase in expressions of righteous indignation from Americans of all political persuasions. Relativism (cultural, moral) is out and a new era of Moral Clarity is in the ascendant. The irony is that this notion of moral clarity is used by each side to denounce the position of the other, so who has it right?
When the world is talking about issues as heady as extra-judicial rendition, warrantless wire-tapping and tor . . . er, I mean ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ you can bet that filmmakers will not be far behind in sharing with us their own elevated views on matters. Topical cinema is generally problematic for a whole host of reasons, but what passes for political filmmaking in these post-9/11-Iraq-War-On-Violent-Extremist-Islamo-Fascism times has reached a new nadir.
Gavin Hood's Rendition (2007) uses the practice of extraordinary rendition—a policy drafted during the Clinton administration—as its starting point to ostensibly ask questions about the efficacy and morality of the practice of harsh interrogations (torture) to identify members of terrorist organizations and learn the details of coming attacks with the ultimate aim of preventing them. The film bears comparison to another topical film dealing with issues stemming from an earlier historical example of what one might call the Clash of Civilizations between the liberal democratic West and Arab/Muslim Near East--Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers (1967). The two films differ not so much on the answers they develop to the question of the legitimacy of torture as a tactical response to terrorism—though their conclusions are indeed different—but in the ways in which the essential questions are asked.
The story told in Rendition is that of Anwar el-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally), an Egyptian chemical engineer who has been living in the United States as a resident alien for fourteen years with his mother, his very beautiful, very pregnant and very white wife (Reese Witherspoon) and their young son. As the film opens, el-Ibrahimi is preparing to return home from a chemical engineering conference in South Africa. At the same time, in an unnamed North African country, a suicide bomber detonates his weapon outside a sidewalk café frequented by Abasi Fawal (Yigal Naor), an apparatchik in the country's internal security apparatus and a notorious torturer. Though the bomb fails to kill Fawal, it just so happens that a vehicle carrying local CIA station chief William Dixon (David Fabrizio) and his lead analyst Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhall) is passing just at this moment and Dixon is killed by shrapnel from the blast. Combing through the call logs of the telephone number of Rashid Salimi, the notorious terrorist who claimed responsibility for the attack, American agents discover that several calls were made and received by el-Ibrahimi's mobile telephone. As he disembarks from an airliner at Reagan National Airport, el-Ibrahimi is detained by CIA personnel and put on a plane headed to the (still) unnamed North African country—it is at this point that everything turns to shit.
One of the paradoxes inherent in contemporary political cinema is that, on the one hand, a filmmaker should present the superiority of her moral position as forcefully as possible, but she must also, in accordance with the dictates of political correctness, do so without giving offense to special populations or interest groups. In effect, a political film—particularly a liberal political film—must be made without controversy and a non-controversial political statement is basically meaningless or at best irrelevant.
Rendition is no exception to this in that the film is neatly stripped of controversy by insisting on the innocence of el-Ibrahimi. The audience is forced to endure scenes of successive sessions of various tortures, including electrocution and the obligatory water-boarding (wink!) and el-Ibrahimi is powerless to stop it as he does not have the information his interrogators are seeking. We are thus justifiably sickened by his extra-judicial interception and his treatment at the hands of Fawal and his associates. The problem with this is that the film doesn't really ask whether such harsh tactics might indeed be effective and justified. The idea that torture simply doesn't work is presented as something of a Received Truth that needs no scrutiny. An attentive viewer must ask herself how the movie might play if el-Ibrahimi had indeed sold technological information to the bombers as he falsely claims in order to put an end to his mistreatment.
The Battle of Algiers, on the other hand, comes to the viewer unencumbered by such received moral truths. Though Pontecorvo's sympathy with the native Algerians' struggle for self-determination is never left in doubt, the conflict between them and their French colonial masters is presented as a case of two roughly equally legitimate groups who happen to have competing agendas. When the Algiers cell of the FLN begins its campaign of bombings in the European quarter of the city, the audience is not spared the sight of the terror and violence that results. Though based on an antiquated system of racial and cultural superiority, part of the legacy of French colonialism in Algeria was a population of several million European residents who had lived in the country, often for generations, expending their labors to make the desert fruitful and build fulfilling lives for themselves and their families. Viewing the film through 21st Century eyes, we understand the inherent injustice of the unequal treatment of Arab and European residents in Algeria—but this does not mean we cannot sympathize with the pieds-noirs who suddenly find themselves faced with the destruction of their lives and livelihoods.
The Battle of Algiers is something of a textbook for modern day insurgency and counter-insurgency tactics. The Algiers cell of the FLN structured itself such that each member knew only the identities of two other members. Moreover, members were instructed to change their hiding places within the casbah every 24 hours, rendering any information gleaned by the authorities obsolete after only a day. As a result of the acutely time-sensitive nature of the search for intelligence, the French authorities found it necessary to resort to torture in order to glean information that was still relevant. This is the key: the French had a compelling reason to resort to inhumane interrogation tactics (the old ticking time bomb, if you will) and as the historically accurate events portrayed in the film show, these techniques worked. The Algiers uprising was quashed, all members of the leadership of the cell either killed or arrested, in a span of three months.
Pontecorvo did not shy away from pointing out the many ironies of the French government's tactics in dealing with the uprising and the press's response to them. In one of the film’s most bitterly rendered scenes, the architect of the French response to the uprising, Colonel Mathieu (Jean Martin), faces tough questions from reporters about the methods used by his paratroopers. Mathieu responds:
“Their success is the result of these methods. One depends on the other. The word ‘torture’ isn’t used in our orders. We use interrogation as the only valid police method against clandestine activity. The FLN asks all its members, in case of capture to remain silent for 24 hours. Then they may talk. This gives the FLN time to render any information useless. And us? What form of questioning must we adopt? Civil law procedures, which take months for a mere misdemeanor? The problem is this: The FLN wants to throw us out of Algeria, and we want to stay. Even with slight shades of opinion, you all agree that we must stay. When the FLN rebellion began, there were no shades at all. Every paper, the communist press included, wanted it crushed. We’re here for that reason alone. We’re neither madmen nor sadists. We are soldiers. Our duty is to win. Therefore, to be precise, it’s my turn to ask a question. Should France stay in Algeria? If you answer is still yes, then you must accept all the consequences.”
As Mathieu’s speech ends, the film presents a chilling montage of the various torture techniques used by the French to bring down the Algiers uprising. Following this, scenes of FLN cadres driving down busy Algiers streets, gunning down dozens of innocent European civilians.
By refusing to either idealize or excuse the actions of either side in this struggle, The Battle of Algiers establishes an enlightened position that is far ahead of its time. This contrasts strongly with the undoubtedly unintentional, but nevertheless unmistakable air of cultural bigotry presented by Rendition. There is a remarkably telling scene in which Gyllenhall’s gutless “jackal” reveals to the North African country’s interior minister that the names provided by el-Ibrahimi are the same as the starting line-up of the 1990 Egyptian soccer team. Gyllenhall insists that this means that el-Ibrahimi is innocent and he just provided the names to stop the torture. The interior minister responds:
“We have a saying: ‘Beat your woman every morning. If you don’t know why, she does.’”
Gyllenhall responds:
“We have a saying, too. Do you know Shakespeare? ‘I fear you speak upon the rack where men enforced do speak anything.’”
This exchange provides a startling contrast to the exchange between Colonel Mathieu and Djafar (Saadi Yacef), the captured leader of the Algiers cell:
Mathieu: I’d have hated to blow you all up.
Djafar: Why?
Mathieu: Your picture and your file have been on my desk for months. I have the feeling I know you a bit. You don’t strike me as the kind for empty gestures.
Djafar: You seem satisfied to have me alive.
Mathieu: Yes, I am.
Djafar: I thought you’d regret it. I gave you an unexpected advantage.
Mathieu: No, only the satisfaction of having had the right hunch.
These are the words of men, admittedly of competing goals and worldviews, who recognize the legitimacy of one another’s positions. Though one position may be more tenable in moral terms, the world of the film—like the world of, well, the world—is not divided between good guys and villains. The worldview of Rendition, on the other hand, is more neatly divided between the heroes and villains and therefore so much less like life.
When the world is talking about issues as heady as extra-judicial rendition, warrantless wire-tapping and tor . . . er, I mean ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ you can bet that filmmakers will not be far behind in sharing with us their own elevated views on matters. Topical cinema is generally problematic for a whole host of reasons, but what passes for political filmmaking in these post-9/11-Iraq-War-On-Violent-Extremist-Islamo-Fascism times has reached a new nadir.
Gavin Hood's Rendition (2007) uses the practice of extraordinary rendition—a policy drafted during the Clinton administration—as its starting point to ostensibly ask questions about the efficacy and morality of the practice of harsh interrogations (torture) to identify members of terrorist organizations and learn the details of coming attacks with the ultimate aim of preventing them. The film bears comparison to another topical film dealing with issues stemming from an earlier historical example of what one might call the Clash of Civilizations between the liberal democratic West and Arab/Muslim Near East--Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers (1967). The two films differ not so much on the answers they develop to the question of the legitimacy of torture as a tactical response to terrorism—though their conclusions are indeed different—but in the ways in which the essential questions are asked.
The story told in Rendition is that of Anwar el-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally), an Egyptian chemical engineer who has been living in the United States as a resident alien for fourteen years with his mother, his very beautiful, very pregnant and very white wife (Reese Witherspoon) and their young son. As the film opens, el-Ibrahimi is preparing to return home from a chemical engineering conference in South Africa. At the same time, in an unnamed North African country, a suicide bomber detonates his weapon outside a sidewalk café frequented by Abasi Fawal (Yigal Naor), an apparatchik in the country's internal security apparatus and a notorious torturer. Though the bomb fails to kill Fawal, it just so happens that a vehicle carrying local CIA station chief William Dixon (David Fabrizio) and his lead analyst Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhall) is passing just at this moment and Dixon is killed by shrapnel from the blast. Combing through the call logs of the telephone number of Rashid Salimi, the notorious terrorist who claimed responsibility for the attack, American agents discover that several calls were made and received by el-Ibrahimi's mobile telephone. As he disembarks from an airliner at Reagan National Airport, el-Ibrahimi is detained by CIA personnel and put on a plane headed to the (still) unnamed North African country—it is at this point that everything turns to shit.
One of the paradoxes inherent in contemporary political cinema is that, on the one hand, a filmmaker should present the superiority of her moral position as forcefully as possible, but she must also, in accordance with the dictates of political correctness, do so without giving offense to special populations or interest groups. In effect, a political film—particularly a liberal political film—must be made without controversy and a non-controversial political statement is basically meaningless or at best irrelevant.
Rendition is no exception to this in that the film is neatly stripped of controversy by insisting on the innocence of el-Ibrahimi. The audience is forced to endure scenes of successive sessions of various tortures, including electrocution and the obligatory water-boarding (wink!) and el-Ibrahimi is powerless to stop it as he does not have the information his interrogators are seeking. We are thus justifiably sickened by his extra-judicial interception and his treatment at the hands of Fawal and his associates. The problem with this is that the film doesn't really ask whether such harsh tactics might indeed be effective and justified. The idea that torture simply doesn't work is presented as something of a Received Truth that needs no scrutiny. An attentive viewer must ask herself how the movie might play if el-Ibrahimi had indeed sold technological information to the bombers as he falsely claims in order to put an end to his mistreatment.
The Battle of Algiers, on the other hand, comes to the viewer unencumbered by such received moral truths. Though Pontecorvo's sympathy with the native Algerians' struggle for self-determination is never left in doubt, the conflict between them and their French colonial masters is presented as a case of two roughly equally legitimate groups who happen to have competing agendas. When the Algiers cell of the FLN begins its campaign of bombings in the European quarter of the city, the audience is not spared the sight of the terror and violence that results. Though based on an antiquated system of racial and cultural superiority, part of the legacy of French colonialism in Algeria was a population of several million European residents who had lived in the country, often for generations, expending their labors to make the desert fruitful and build fulfilling lives for themselves and their families. Viewing the film through 21st Century eyes, we understand the inherent injustice of the unequal treatment of Arab and European residents in Algeria—but this does not mean we cannot sympathize with the pieds-noirs who suddenly find themselves faced with the destruction of their lives and livelihoods.
The Battle of Algiers is something of a textbook for modern day insurgency and counter-insurgency tactics. The Algiers cell of the FLN structured itself such that each member knew only the identities of two other members. Moreover, members were instructed to change their hiding places within the casbah every 24 hours, rendering any information gleaned by the authorities obsolete after only a day. As a result of the acutely time-sensitive nature of the search for intelligence, the French authorities found it necessary to resort to torture in order to glean information that was still relevant. This is the key: the French had a compelling reason to resort to inhumane interrogation tactics (the old ticking time bomb, if you will) and as the historically accurate events portrayed in the film show, these techniques worked. The Algiers uprising was quashed, all members of the leadership of the cell either killed or arrested, in a span of three months.
Pontecorvo did not shy away from pointing out the many ironies of the French government's tactics in dealing with the uprising and the press's response to them. In one of the film’s most bitterly rendered scenes, the architect of the French response to the uprising, Colonel Mathieu (Jean Martin), faces tough questions from reporters about the methods used by his paratroopers. Mathieu responds:
“Their success is the result of these methods. One depends on the other. The word ‘torture’ isn’t used in our orders. We use interrogation as the only valid police method against clandestine activity. The FLN asks all its members, in case of capture to remain silent for 24 hours. Then they may talk. This gives the FLN time to render any information useless. And us? What form of questioning must we adopt? Civil law procedures, which take months for a mere misdemeanor? The problem is this: The FLN wants to throw us out of Algeria, and we want to stay. Even with slight shades of opinion, you all agree that we must stay. When the FLN rebellion began, there were no shades at all. Every paper, the communist press included, wanted it crushed. We’re here for that reason alone. We’re neither madmen nor sadists. We are soldiers. Our duty is to win. Therefore, to be precise, it’s my turn to ask a question. Should France stay in Algeria? If you answer is still yes, then you must accept all the consequences.”
As Mathieu’s speech ends, the film presents a chilling montage of the various torture techniques used by the French to bring down the Algiers uprising. Following this, scenes of FLN cadres driving down busy Algiers streets, gunning down dozens of innocent European civilians.
By refusing to either idealize or excuse the actions of either side in this struggle, The Battle of Algiers establishes an enlightened position that is far ahead of its time. This contrasts strongly with the undoubtedly unintentional, but nevertheless unmistakable air of cultural bigotry presented by Rendition. There is a remarkably telling scene in which Gyllenhall’s gutless “jackal” reveals to the North African country’s interior minister that the names provided by el-Ibrahimi are the same as the starting line-up of the 1990 Egyptian soccer team. Gyllenhall insists that this means that el-Ibrahimi is innocent and he just provided the names to stop the torture. The interior minister responds:
“We have a saying: ‘Beat your woman every morning. If you don’t know why, she does.’”
Gyllenhall responds:
“We have a saying, too. Do you know Shakespeare? ‘I fear you speak upon the rack where men enforced do speak anything.’”
This exchange provides a startling contrast to the exchange between Colonel Mathieu and Djafar (Saadi Yacef), the captured leader of the Algiers cell:
Mathieu: I’d have hated to blow you all up.
Djafar: Why?
Mathieu: Your picture and your file have been on my desk for months. I have the feeling I know you a bit. You don’t strike me as the kind for empty gestures.
Djafar: You seem satisfied to have me alive.
Mathieu: Yes, I am.
Djafar: I thought you’d regret it. I gave you an unexpected advantage.
Mathieu: No, only the satisfaction of having had the right hunch.
These are the words of men, admittedly of competing goals and worldviews, who recognize the legitimacy of one another’s positions. Though one position may be more tenable in moral terms, the world of the film—like the world of, well, the world—is not divided between good guys and villains. The worldview of Rendition, on the other hand, is more neatly divided between the heroes and villains and therefore so much less like life.
I do not fault Rendition for asking the question of whether extra-judicial rendition and torture are legitimate means for prosecuting a war against armed terrorist. Rather, my problem with the film is that it asked the questions in such a way that the answers were presented as foregone conclusions. Debate of this sort insults the intelligence of attentive filmgoers and adds little to the many critical debates going on within our society.
2 comments:
Excellent point about 'Rendition' using it as "a given" that torture doesn't work. From what I've read it doesn't- if torture worked, I'd basically be for it...fuck a higher moral ground- but it really speaks to these kind of movies being big left-wing circle jerk: Who, that doesn't already agree with the movie would enjoy it? And yeah, wouldn't a movie about a terrorist who IS guilty being tortured only enhance the barbarism of torture??
brandon-
thanks for the comments. the movie really seems like a big wasted opportunity, to my mind. i mean, when people go on about the spectre of terrorism and the threat that it poses to our way of life, the thing that strikes me as the most important aspect of our system that is threatened is the rule of law. if the rule of law is thus compromised in order to preserve our way of life, the thing that is worth preserving is suddenly moot. the film really could have explored this aspect of the process of extraordinary rendition and made a salient case in terms of why the struggle against extremism is important. instead, you have a movie that is basically nothing more than an entertainment for people who already share the values of the filmmaker. also, i sort of intentionally resisted stating my own position in terms of whether i think torture is a valid technique because it seemed totally beside the point. the movie didnt even ask the question, so why get into it. i basically feel the same way you do, though, in the sense that torture is not really an effective tool because it doesn't work--except when it does.
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