Recent Movies (2)

No End in Sight. This could be the first great movie about the Iraq war. It is a documentary that largely consists of interviews with men and women in suits, interspersed with a combination of news clips and on-location footage. It mostly ignores the question of whether the war was justified to begin with, instead spending much of its time exploring the consequences of two decisions by Paul Bremer: The disbanding of the Iraqi Army, and the purging of Baath party members from public employment.       

The concept sounds boring at first, but we live in a time when some of the most exciting movies can be about speeches or slide presentations. The filmmaker, Charles Ferguson, has said he wanted to appeal to people across the political spectrum, including those who supported the invasion or voted for Bush. And a difficult trick in any documentary is to establish that its director can be trusted. The insurmountable problem with Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 (horrible title) is that he used editing to manipulate his viewers rather than enlighten them; he would pose leading questions to a public figure and then cut away abruptly, making us suspicious that we only saw half of the interview. In contrast, No End in Sight, which features interviews with Jay Garner and Richard Armitage, among others, gives its sources plenty of time to make their case, allowing the audience the freedom to reach its own conclusions. The film also makes no attempt at humor, for the excellent reason that the situation we are in is not funny.

That said, it is unfortunate that very few people are likely to see this movie. Last weekend, it was playing in 21 theaters and grossed a tenth of a million dollars, while the statistics for the number-one film, Rush Hour 3, were 3778 and $49.1 million, respectively. It is still worth noting that the average gross per theater was higher for No End in Sight than for most other movies.