Review of The Green Wave (2012) by Walter M — 18 Aug 2012

As an examination into the events leading up to and following the 2009 Iranian national elections, "The Green Wave" takes a more emtional route than an informational one. Overall, it is not as insightful as it could have been, although it does a good job of bringing up some of the political shenanigans of the ruling party.

Along these same lines, more could have been done here to probe the country's arcane political structure of a usually passively repressive regime that holds elections as a form of show for critics, both internally and internationally.

(All of which makes the political organizing that much more brave.) Some of that probably has to do with relying so much on anonymous blog posts and twitter feeds and I am not sure we are at a point where we can rely on them as a source material for a documentary.

What speaks to me more than anything else here is the invaluable cell phone footage, capturing everything from the rallies to post election brutality. Of the animated footage, it is mostly neither here nor there, but there are some images of torture that I will be unable to shake off for a long while that just as much reminds me of the work of Frank Miller.