Review of Control Room (2004) by David B — 25 Jun 2004

I am a moderate. That's not very common. I try to stay politically astute but uninvolved. Arguing about politics can just get really silly sometimes. But I'm all up for listening to people's opinions. And, as luck would have it, I saw to documentaries dealing with politics and Iraq in two days.

[b]Control Room[/b], if it does anything, will convince you to never ever think of journalism as a career track, or be glad that you didn't. The role of a journalist is to stay objective, but most of the subjects in Control Room, whether American or Iraqi, spend a lot of time in a tricky position: they want to be fair and balanced, but at the same time want to cover their country's ass. It's not easy to be Al Jazeera. Rumsfeld is calling you Al Queda's mouthpiece, while at the same time the Iraqi Information Minister is telling you to quit broadcasting American propoganda. Caught in the middle is Hassan Ibrahim, who runs the station and simultaneoulsy loves and hates America and Iraq. He can't stand the Bush administration, but wants to send his children to be educated in the US. That's just one of the many instances in the movie where there is nothing but grey area. The soldiers keep talking about how they're trying to help Iraqis, but keep on killing them. Even Lt. Rushing, an American who engages in heated debate with other Al Jazeera staff but manages to stay on the level, has trouble moderating his mind and his heart. The most telling moment is when Ibrahim chews out the reporter who got a radical left-winger to spout conspiracy theories to talk to the network. The reporter can't fathom how he went wrong: "But he was talking about his own country!" We seem to believe that anyone willing to badmouth their own nation is telling the absolute truth. And that ties in to the other film I saw...

Michael Moore films are of a special breed. He's obviously biased against President Bush, and we're biased against him for being so biased. The general consensus towards [b]Fahrenheit 9/11 [/b]is that it's blatant propoganda, but since it's Moore, we have to just take it in stride. That's a bit unfair. But he doesn't disappoint; dissenting viewpoints in the documentary are few and far between. He's learned some things since making [b]Bowling for Columbine[/b], however. There aren't as many gimmicks and self-serving stunts. He's mostly limited to narration, and that's a good thing. The bad thing is that his gimmicks don't work as well as they did in BFC. Going into a bank and buying a gun? Funny. Pestering congressmen to enlist their children in the Army? Funny, until you remember all those times Greenpeace bugged you as you were trying to go back to your dorm and you wanted to punch the guy. He tries to pull the heartstrings with the story of a woman who lost her son in Iraq, a very sad and tragic story that loses all of its resonance once you realize that Moore is parading her sadness for all to see. Fahrenheit 9/11 does work, however, and it works when Moore ditches the ploys and artificies and sticks to the facts. Facts like how Bush lied to us about Iraq, how he took so much vacation time before 9/11, how his Ole Boy Network and the Bin Laden family are almost one and the same. He has evidence, he provides it, sticks to it, and convinces us that something is amiss. You could have hours and hours of debate over whether all of his points are valid, and I don't feel like nitpicking with Moore right now. Maybe later. Moore is more mature this time, and less entertaining. But the stuff that he has, when it works, is killer.

On a side note, why are most documentaries made by liberals? Super Size Me, The Fog Of War, anything that Moore makes, and the upcoming The Corporation, all lean significantly towards the left. The only conservative documentary I can think of is the upcoming Michael Moore Hates America. That's not a good sign. I mean, if it was called Michael Moore Is A Stupid White Man, I could at least credit the guy for trying to be clever. But instead, he's coming off as overly agressive, as is the right wing stereotype. Maybe the liberals have an easier job. Greedy corporations, the plight of the lower class, the failure of the war on drugs, that's easy to make a film about. But what fits in with the conservative ideology that you can do? Something about how government is too big? The only good topics I can think of are how abortion is bad for you (and that's NOT a statement on my behalf; it's theoretical) or how Saddam was really evil. I guess the liberals do have it easy.