The NEW Controverial Leftist Documentary (Joe Gandelman)
Joe Gandelman
Talk show hosts get your mouths ready. Editorial writers, columnists and bloggers get to your keyboards NOW. Because there is a NEW documentary out — and you can (and we do)make the argument that this one transcends predictable election-year partisan battles and viewpoints (and as in the case of Michael Moore's film we will indeed see it for ourselves).
The film is called Control Room and it documents the Arab T.V. network inside Al Jazeera's correspondents as they covered the U.S.-Iraq war. But is it a straightfoward documentary or, like Moore's, in the end a political statement where documentary is a device?
Oxblog's David Adesnik has a solid post on it. Here is just a key part it:
He then quotes from some reviews of the film, such as the New York Times':
And now we use the dreaded words: Read the whole thing.
The film is called Control Room and it documents the Arab T.V. network inside Al Jazeera's correspondents as they covered the U.S.-Iraq war. But is it a straightfoward documentary or, like Moore's, in the end a political statement where documentary is a device?
Oxblog's David Adesnik has a solid post on it. Here is just a key part it:
THE HEROES OF AL-JAZEERA: The subtitle of this film should have been "If Michael Moore Had a Brain". Control Room, a documentary by Jehane Noujaim, takes us inside Al Jazeera's Qatar headquarters during the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. With a subtlety not often found in the midst of a presidential election, Noujaim portrays the producers and correspondents of Al Jazeera as the last true heirs of Woodward & Bernstein — unarmed men and women unafraid to speak truth to power....
...Control Room focuses on how Al Jazeera challenges American military propaganda in a manner (supposedly) far more effective than than the (supposedly) co-opted and covertly patriotic journalists of the American media establishment. This is exactly the point that Michael Moore tried to make in Fahrenheit 9/11, but Noujaim does it with far greater panache.
He then quotes from some reviews of the film, such as the New York Times':
In other words, liberal film critics love Control Room because it advances a firm leftist critique of American ignorance and ethnocentrism while presenting itself as an unbiased and self-aware observer of America at war....
The saddest thing about Control Room is what it could have been. The rise of independent networks such as Al Jazeera is a revolutionary development in the Arab World. Instead of recycling standard leftist criticisms of the war, Noujaim might have asked whether the democratic aspirations of Al Jazeera's producers and correspondents have awoken similar aspirations in the network's 40 million Arab viewers. Whereas Saddam Hussein fell to American arms, the best hope for the liberation of Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia may be Al Jazeera.
And now we use the dreaded words: Read the whole thing.
