No End in Sight (2007)

R: After the debacle that was the first twenty minutes of The Ten, we decided to go immediately from The State to The Michigan, to see No End in Sight. It's not bad, though it's not fantastic either. Most of the movie is a broad overview of the Iraq war, and it's not a bad one. They've interviewed a lot of the right intellectual types (George Packer, Samantha Powers, Nir Rosen), and a pretty good collection of people from the first part of the occupation (the Jay Garner part). If you're not willing to spend more than two hours trying to understand the events of the last four years -- and let's be honest, we're all busy people -- this is a good place to start. Not as good as at least some of the books on the subject*, but better than trying to keep track of things by following the news.

The director seemed to have a hard time deciding what the focus of the movie would be, though, and focus is pretty important in a two hour movie on a very complicated subject. After awhile, they decide to spend some time on the decision to disband the Iraqi army, and do a pretty good job going back and forth between people from the Garner team and the one member of the Bremer team who was willing to be interviewed. It's a pretty good segment. There's also an interview with a young marine which is pretty compelling, and a pretty strange "home movie" put together by a private contractor.

On the whole, I don't feel like they did much with the medium. I feel like there are lots of things that they could show -- life in Baghdad would be a good place to start -- rather than the telling that they stuck with. On the other hand, I have a hard time figuring out what other medium would have been appropriate for this kind of broad overview. It wouldn't have worked as a magazine article, and I don't know that it would have worked on TV. In that sense, then, maybe it was the right medium. I'm not sure.

K: I pretty much agree. One point that I would make is that some of the footage of Iraqis and their reactions are pretty compelling. It was actually surprisingly moving to see the footage with the original sound. The footage was the kind of thing that you might see behind a talking head on the news--but without the sound, it feels much more removed. I would say that it's worth seeing.


*If you're curious, check out "The Assassin's Gate".