Review of Protocols of Zion (2005) by Tom M — 19 Dec 2005

About 100 years ago, this book was written called "The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion". Its cumbersome title kept it off the best-seller lists despite its provocative content: it supposedly contains the top secret meeting minutes of a cabal of evil Jews planning to take over the world!

The only thing is, it was exposed as a fraud way back in the 1920s. It was really written by the Russian Secret Police, hating haters who hated long before it was cool, to try to foment anti-Jewish sentiment. And it worked. Supposedly Hitler was a big fan. As was his pal Henry Ford.

The maker of this documentary, Marc Levin, had never heard of "The Protocols" until after September 11, 2001. Soon after, word on the street had it that no Jews were killed in the World Trade Center because they'd all been warned to stay home. An Egyptian cabbie insisted to Levin that the attacks were a Jewish conspiracy. He's the one who tipped Levin off about "The Protocols". Though apparently well known in the Arab community (two dramatizations have appeared on Middle Eastern television), the majority of the Jewish community has never even heard of it.

This movie, loosely based on "The Protocols", really is about exposing the recent upswell in anti-Semitism in our country. There are interviews with groups of angry young black guys on the street, angry young Arab guys on the street, the owner of a skinhead supply store, a guy who runs an anti-Jewish website. Some of these scenes are laugh-out-loud funny as they contain rants so ridiculous or factually incorrect that the interviewees come off sounding like complete morons.

Though it might be easy to dismiss most of what appears in this film as the thoughts of disenfranchised lunatics, there are a couple of more ominous clips. The Malaysian prime minister is shown quoting from the fabricated book in a speech in 2003. And we see an inflammatory clip of the Egyptian made-for-TV movie version which was shown during the holy month of Ramadan.

Though the apparent increase in anti-Semitism in the world in recent years is an important topic, this really isn't a very well-made movie. It's the sort of film where they just throw a bunch of stuff at you and hope that some of it will stick. We've got anti-war marches, a visit to the grave of a Jewish guy who was killed in the WTC attacks (as if to prove to us that the rumors really aren't true?), and shots of the Brooklyn house where the filmmaker's father grew up. Lots of filler in a movie that's only ninety minutes long.

It's hard to recommend such a poorly made film as this, but I'm doing so at the behest of the Jewish friend with whom I saw it. He agreed that it kind of sucked but thought it should be graded on a curve since it addresses a topic not normally covered in the mass media. Though I think this is more of a preaching-to-the-choir kind of movie (I didn't see any neo-Nazis in the audience) than a film that'll change the world, one can always hope.