The Road to Guantanamo: The Absurd Cost Of War

By zubin • Sep 4th, 2007 • Filed under: Documentary, Film Review, Movies

While the film gives you a very powerful viewpoint from one perspective, it falls into the same trap that Moore creates; the one sided ideological barrage with no counter-point, writes Zubin Driver

The Road to Guantanamo: The Absurd Cost Of War

A bunch of Pak-British youth stray into Afghanistan post 9/11 and are sucked into a chaotic world that ends up in Guantanamo. This is a disintegrating and screwed up Afghanistan where nothing makes any sense. The Taliban are under fire, the combined forces of the Northern Alliance with the USA are on the rise. The social fabric is destroyed and no one has a sense of what is happening. Watching the footage one is reminded of post world war II Europe, Bosnia and now Iraq…mass migrations, epidemics, and a populace that has been raped over and over again by a variety of invaders.

The bleak terrain has a metaphorical and very real significance. There are resonances of Werner Herzog’s film on the 1st Iraq invasion…hostile territory where insignificant human beings wander around dislodged from everything they valued.
The country looks like a giant open wound….the people forced into a circular and meaningless migratory path that leads nowhere. It is into this wound that the three Tipton boys land… the Docu-Drama traces the shattering of their idealism, the physical and intellectual shock of experiencing brutality and disintegration personally. The use of their idyllic memories from England heightens their emotional plight.

While the film gives you a very powerful viewpoint from one perspective, it falls into the same trap that Moore creates; the one sided ideological barrage with no counter-point. The USA is portrayed as the big bad bully of the world. It is the cruel face of imperialism and a huge, cold and insensitive military machine. It has no computation of human cost and ‘Muslim’ lives are always expendable. While there are arguments for both ideological positions, the use of a docu-drama methodology implies a certain urge to represent a balanced picture of all the stake-holders involved. In this case, this is subverted to an extent by the director’s agenda. However, in the end, the absurd cost of war is what echoes in our minds, the millions of innocents who have paid the price in global conflict zones throughout history.

Your Rating

(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

Loading ...

Email/Bookmark

Print This Post

Recommended...

The Motorcycle Diaries
Y Tu Mama Tambien: A Must Watch for Young Adults and Adult-Teenagers !
Les Barbouzes: Watch it
Discreet Charm of bourgeoisie
Adoption: The Road to Freedom