Review of Iraq in Fragments (2006) by Walter M — 30 Jan 2007

With the artful and fragile "Iraq in Fragments," director.

James Longley has created a curious kind of documentary. In an industry where the current trend for docs is to have some kind of audience surrogate, be it a host ('An Inconvenient Truth') or the filmmaker himself (any Michael Moore movie), Longley ensures there is no outside presence felt beyond the camera itself. And his fly-on-the-wall approach is so subtle and sure that it's oftentimes easy to forget that apparatus, too. The movie takes place in thirds, entirely in Arabic, as it tells three stories - one Shia, one Sunni, and one Kurdish - in a pained attempt to understand a fragmented, post-war Iraq. As it turns out, unsurprisingly, there are no easy answers. This is rare, nonpartisan moviemaking, an honest-to-God search for logic in the mire, told as much in pictures as it is in words. The Sunnis openly curse the Americans; the Kurds finally have some semblance of peace without Saddam. Each perspective is given its due. The first part, which follows a boy named Mohammed as he navigates a confusing childhood, is about as good as documentary filmmaking gets, more emotionally complex than any fiction writer could invent. Unfortunately, it also makes the rest of the film feel a little less alive... which might be a somewhat unfair complaint, since Longley clearly achieves his superobjective - to show us that the Iraq puzzle isn't any clearer to the collective Iraqis as it is to anyone else. And he gets major points for not succumbing to commerciality, not making a conventionally "marketable," American documentary, not making something easily palatable to the right, left, or your average moviegoer. It's enlightening and also very frightening, as it clearly shows us that no matter what our plans from U.S. soil may be, there's no end in sight for anyone.