Government accountability, front and center, in Gavin Hood's exemplary OFFICIAL SECRETS

Anyone interested in recent history -- including how and why certain western powers got into an unjust, stupid and worthless (except to those corporate and individual folk who continue to profit from it) war that is still going on -- will not want to miss OFFICIAL SECRETS, the film co-written and directed by Gavin Hood that tells the based-on-life story of British intelligence agency whistleblower, Katharine Gun, who leaked information about an illegal NSA spy operation designed to push the UN Security Council into sanctioning the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In the film, we see our own President George W. Bush and Colin Powell, as well as Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, blatantly lying on to the television cameras (Powell has since apologized for this; so far as I know, Bush and Blair never have) in the run-up to the vile Iraq War. What filmmaker Hood (pictured at right), his co-writers and his very starry British cast have done remarkably well, is to bring to immediate and visceral life how word of these sleazy goings-on, which resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, managed to leak out to the world -- despite the leak's doing, finally, not one lick of good in halting the war.

Still, as the Brit journalist (played so well by Matt Smith, above and below) points out late in the proceedings, the British government that did this, and the British press that mostly managed to cover it up, rather than actually cover it, must answer for their behavior. As should the American press, along with the corrupt and criminal past administration most responsible for the atrocity.

Yet no one has ever taken responsibility for any of this. The cowardly Obama administration did nothing to bring the criminals to any kind of remote justice (or even admission of responsibility), and then allowed Wall Street and the Banks to profit from their misdeeds involving mortgages, bubbles and world-wide meltdowns. Anyone naive enough to wonder how Donald Trump arrived at his present position need only consider this: When government responsibility is shirked over and over again, a nation ends up with someone in charge who actually revels in irresponsbility. (Italy and Berlusconi provide an even earlier example.)

The movie's greatest strength lies in its wonderful detailing of everything we see and hear -- from how the leaked information slowly makes its way public, to how the press works (or sometimes doesn't) to Mrs. Gun (achingly, vitally portrayed by Keira Knightley, above) and her life at work and at home with her immigrant Muslim husband (Adam Bakri, below), who is used by her government in a particularly nasty manner.

In these wonderfully real and specific details -- as well as in dialog that, while always believable, does a bang-up job of bringing the details and plot strands together -- Mr. Hood and his crew find the way to offer up a hugely important slice of recent history. If you don't follow British history as closely as you do American (if anyone still does much of either), Gun's story will not be so familiar, and its outcome (particularly the "why" of that outcome) will surprise you.

Along the way, you'll be treated to some of the UK's finest performers, from Ralph Fiennes (above, bewigged, front and center), Jeremy Northam (as Fiennes' friend/foe), Matthew Goode (below) and Rhys Ifans, among a bunch of others. All do a first-rate job. TrustMovies suspects many of these fine actors came aboard this project for reasons as much to do with its importance as with their own egos and/or paychecks.

As good as is the supporting cast, it's Ms Knightley who gives the film its heart, mind and strength. Her performance is so impressive that, however you may feel about this ongoing war and the venal politicians who enabled it, it will be difficult not to understand why this woman acted as she did.

From IFC Films and running a just-about-perfect 111 minutes, Official Secrets, named for the (in)famous "Official Secrets Act" -- used by the British government (as so many countries use similar "laws") to silence its citizens in the name of national security -- after opening on the coasts, hits South Florida this Friday, September 13. Look for it at the AMC Aventura 24 and Sunset Place 24 and the CMX Brickell City Center, and Cobb's Downtown at the Gardens 16. 

Streaming "must" -- and a book review, too -- as Aureliano Amadei's award-laden 20 CIGARETTES gives us a new perspective on our own Iraq War

TrustMovies first covered the amazing film, 20 CIGARETTES, back in June of 2011, when it made its New York debut as part of the FSLC's Open Roads series of new Italian cinema. (You can read that post here.) I was blown away by it then, and seeing it again just recently, it seems even better. Perhaps because I had also, just prior to viewing the film, read the equally important and maybe just a little bit better book on which the film is based.

First published in Italy in 2005, the memoir, TWENTY CIGARETTES IN NASIRIYAH, written by Francesco Trento and Aureliano Amadei, and based on the experiences of Signore Amadei, who was invited by a filmmaker and mentor to come to Iraq and help make a film about the Italian contingent (part of George W. Bush's Coalition of the Willing) and its "peace-keeping" mission in the middle east.

The book is told in the first-person, making it a kind of you-are-there experience which grows more important, immediate and shocking as it moves along.

What happens to Aureliano takes him from happy-go-lucky, young artistic dabbler (played in the film by the talented and highly empathic actor Vinicio Marchioni, shown above and on poster, top, and below) to a severely wounded survivor of a suicide bomb who witnesses first the stupidity and hypocrisy of his own nation as it subserviently follows America into this costly and worthless war, and then the further hypocrisy of its politicians and journalists, and finally one particularly sleazy soldier who claims false credit for saving lives.

These events have turned our "hero" into something quite different from who he originally was, and the memoir turns us, too, in that direction. Compulsively readable in an excellent translation by Wendell Ricketts, Twenty Cigarettes in Nasiriyah is a relatively short read (164 pages) yet so chock full of telling detail -- something that simply could not be crammed into the 90-minute movie -- that you come out of the experience feeling remarkably close to Amadei in every way. His telling of his own tale is liberally filled with humor and especially sarcasm, where Amadei and his naivete are concerned.

The movie version moves from present to past and back again, over and over, as Amadei tells his story with much of that humor and sarcasm intact. He found actors to beautifully portray everyone from his parents (above) and girlfriend/caregiver to the soldiers he managed to bond with briefly before the horror occurs.

Then we get the long, difficult time of recovery -- first in the American hospital near where the incident occurred and then back home in Rome, where he and we must listen to those politicians and sort out the "contra-dictions" of the Italian military presence in Iraq and what this signifies.

For Americans watching this movie, the experience makes us more than ever the "outsiders," even as it puts us in touch with the Iraqi people in a different way. It also forces us look at the war itself differently, via the perspective of a citizen of another western country. We see the horror, the bloodshed, pain and suffering in a less political but more human manner. And then we see, as ever, how the politicians and military try to "spin" events to serve their own interests.

The title (of the film and memoir) comes from our hero's overweening need for a smoke (above), no matter what else is happening (how European!), while the crack cinematography (Vittorio Omodei Zorini) and editing (Alessio Doglione) combine to create a brilliant visual sweep of past and present, attack (below) and recovery, and especially the growth and change of Amadei himself.

The movie's finale is especially moving and unsettling (the book ends very differently, on an angry but thought-provoking note). The movie was made several years after the book's publication; even so, for Amadei -- while things had changed and moved on -- the event at the heart of the tale is still a raw and open wound.

I cannot recommend either the book or the movie highly enough. Both are better than anything else I have seen or read about America's misadventure in the Middle East. I believe they will remain as important a testament to our current times as anything you might peruse. Iraq, meanwhile, continues to fall apart from within and without, while America further declines into a non-democratic nation dedicated to the well-being of the entitled one-per-cent at the expense of the rest of us ninety-niners.

Twenty Cigarettes in Nasiriyah (the memoir, shown at right) is published by Four Cats Press (click and scroll down for information on where to purchase) and perhaps can be found in some of our public libraries (if there is any budget left for small but wise books like this one).

20 Cigarettes (the movie) can be streamed now via Netflix and maybe elsewhere, too. I don't think that any DVD is available for the American market yet, but those of you who own an all-region DVD player can order a copy from Amazon UK.

Mischa Webley's THE KILL HOLE lands in theaters briefly, prior to an April DVDebut

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder has followed soldiers' wartime experiences undoubtedly since history's original war (whatever that was), though it has been called, over the centuries, many other names. While PTSD is simply the latest in a long line of monikers (neurasthenia, shell shock), there can be no surprise that this condition should affect soldiers so drastically, as war brings out the worst in human behavior. The guilt/fear that follows this behavior should be as expected as it is difficult to deal with, and that is the subject of the interesting and worthwhile, though not always successful, new film, THE KILL HOLE, from first-time full-length filmmaker Mischa Webley.

"I fought my fucking ass off for them, and they don't give a shit about me!" an ex-soldier cries early on, and this about sums up the situation of the United States' concern for its veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, just as it was, perhaps to a lesser extent, of those who fought earlier in Vietnam. As screenwriter and director, Mr. Webley (shown at left), I think, understands this situation pretty well and he has communicated it to his two actors who play the leads in his film so that their performances, both quite good, carry us through some of the more difficult dialog and especially the voice-over narration that, from time to time, might sound pretentious if it also did not seem to be coming from such a troubled, off-kilter place.

Of course, these words sounds a little crazy and self-justifying: if the guys who speak and think them were more clear-headed and on top of things, they might by now be teaching philosophy at Yale. Instead they are reliving the past, most of it quite nasty. One of them, Lt. Drake (Chadwick Boseman, above) led a platoon in which the massacre of a family occurred, concluding with the burning alive of a certain "wanted" man on order from "superiors."

An observer of all this (himself unobserved by the murdering platoon) who has come with his own murderous agenda, Sgt. Carter (Tory Kittles) witnessed the killing is now dedicated to killing off those "superiors." He has murdered one of them already, and before he can kill more, Drake is hired/semi-kidnapped by the mercenaries who ordered the original killing (these kinds of mercenaries, after all, are responsible for much of the bloodshed, death and torture in both our current wars) and ordered by them to track Carter to his mountain cabin and kill him.

Before and after this "event" and its follow-up, we sit in with Drake in PTSD meetings led by a very good Billy Zane (above) who tries unsuccessfully to bring Drake out of his shell. The lead mercenaries are played by Peter Greene (below) and Ted Rooney (shown at bottom, center). The major problem with the film is its split personality: the melodrama of the sections involving the all-white mercenaries' against the more serious dialog and bond that form between the two black soldiers.

Race is important here, I believe, for the film (as are our wars) is about the users (the powerful) against the used (the powerless). And while there are plenty of white soldiers who've been used as badly as black ones, historically in this country blacks -- particularly black males -- have been on the bottom. The Kill Hole never pushes its view of racism; given the casting, it does not have to.

Carter's mountain cabin is perched atop a hill, giving him (and us) a view of all the surroundings. The snow-capped mountain (above) that we see from his cabin is a glorious sight and acts as a kind of symbol of something pure, beautiful and out of reach. What we're left with at film's end is a stark, mournful look, not just at the fruits of war but at the horror left in the minds and souls of our veterans. Webley and his cast are to be congratulated for taking us there, even if only fitfully.

The Kill Hole (the title comes from a big black hole on the bulletin board in Carter's cabin), from Alternate Endings Studios and running 92 minutes, arrived yesterday on theater screens in limited release across the country. Here in New York City,  it's playing at the MIST Harlem Cinema. Come April 9, it will be available on DVD.

Laura Poitras' THE OATH captures Islamic -- and western -- hypocrisy

Mercutio's dying curse, "A plague on both your houses!" came to mind as TrustMovies was watching THE OATH, a new documentary by Laura Poitras (My Country, My Country) that steeps us in the hypocrisy and stupidity of some of the practitioners of Islam, as well as that of various arms of the government of The United States of America. Which is the worse offender? View this film, and TM defies you to make any kind of reasoned choice.

To her great credit (and probably to the detriment of her film's box-office take), Ms Poitras (below) refuses to lead us along by the nose or make any of our judgments for us. The Oath is one of the more difficult movies I have encountered over the past year. I had to listen very carefully and I can't tell you how often I wanted to press pause, rewind and listen again.  Wait a minute!  Didn't that guy just contradict himself?  Didn't he say almost the exact opposite a scene or two preceding?  And so forth.  You may feel as did I that you are acting in the role of juror -- in a case where the opposing participants are both liars of a very high (or is it low?) order.

Oaths are all over the place in this film: that taken by Abu Jandal, a cab driver in Yemen who used to act as bodyguard for Osama bin Laden (that oath is about protecting bin Laden); then there is the oath to Islam, of course. On our side is the oath to preserve justice and defend one, Salim Hamdan, bin Laden's former driver and the first man to face the controversial military tribunals of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.  We could also go into the oath of office taken by virtually every member of the U.S. Congress (not to mention our President), each of which is counteracted by Congress' sleazy redrafting of the military tribunal law, after our Supreme Court ruled in Mr. Hamdan's favor in the landmark case of Hamdan vs Rumsfeld -- thus creating new charges to file against this prisoner. (We won't even get into the Bush Administration's lies about WMDs and the like.)

So many oaths are broken so embarrassingly or cavalierly in this film, you will soon wonder if, after all, this is what an oath is for.  (Remind me never to make one.)  Poitras' main protagonist, Abu Jandal has a son he is trying to raise. (I don't recall where the wife/mother is, but then, as this is Islam, we would not see much of her anyway.)  With a ready smile, a quick mouth and a checkered past, he drives that cab, teaches classes in Jihad on the side and appears to be a self-aggrandizing liar. ("I do not train youths for Jihad," he later explains -- although we have seen and heard one of his students arguing with him regarding Islam's proclamation against the killing of innocents, which Abu Jandal then find a reason to excuse. What a guy!)   Of the prisoner Hamdan, we see almost nothing, and by the finale, we understand that this is exactly the way that Hamdan wants it. (Whatever his true feelings or beliefs may be, it is easy to respect him for his silence.)

We meet Hamdan's defense attorney, who seems utterly stymied, though whether he is a part of his own stymie-izaton, I was not sure.  Finally, we learn of the FBI interrogation of Abu Jandal conducted within a week of 9/11.  This becomes the icing on the cake-bomb. Could the FBI have been as stupid, or as naive, or  both -- deliberately -- as Judith Miller was when she wrote her trash for the Times?  Looks that way. Yours truly, no slacker in the naivete department, could hardly have done a worse job.

There are some moments of levity here, most especially during Jandals' "non-existent" Jihad training, when he sends his son out to buy a bottle of British Ginger.  "You're supporting western manufacturers," he is reminded by one of his students. But that is the least of his hypocrisies. You may sit there, post-screening, as did my friend and I, barely able to rise from our seats after all we'd seen. No wonder our little middle east adventure has tuned out to be such a fucking mess.

The Oath, from Zeitgeist Films, more than any other film I have seen except Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight, captures the arrogance and stupidity of our presumption.  Ferguson gives us the big picture, while Poitras zeros in on two small cogs, and simultaneously offers clues to that great gulf between east and west.  Her movie opens this Friday, May 7, in New York City at the IFC Center.  Further playdates -- with cities, dates and theaters -- can be found here.

SEVERE CLEAR: Fraga's editing and soundtrack, atop Scotti's camera-work, bring us the early days of "Iraqi Freedom"

Think a minute: Can you imagine a more depressing activity than reliving the beginnings of our current war in Iraq? Not just the underfunded, nonsensical "operations" (with our troops' non-protected by a cheap and sleazy administration), but the stupidity and presumption of the Rumsfeld team's non-planning (followed by its ridiculous excuses), not to mention the before-and-after lies upon lies of the Bush-Cheney crew? In SEVERE CLEAR we get all of this, plus the camera-work of a certain Marine First Lieutenant named Mike Scotti, who imagines that he is there in Iraq in reprisal for the death of a girl he knew in high school, whose life was lost in the World Trade Center on 9/11.

Scotti (above, left) captures a lot with his little DV mini-cam: the guys in his company, their activities (and thoughts about same) and, unless his voice-over was created much later when he had time to assess some of those aforementioned lies, it sounds as though he was smart enough to know, very early on, that a lot was wrong with what was going on. Scotti's camerawork and narration appear to provide much of what we see in Severe Clear, a first-person documentary account of those early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom.  So, who then is Kristian Fraga (above, right), the man credited for writing, editing, co-producing and directing this movie?

Though TrustMovies requested a short interview with Scotti, it appears that this is not going to happen, so I must proceed using only what I garnered from the 90-minute movie.  This encompasses some very raw footage of life during that 2003 time of Operation Iraqi Freedom.  The movie has been pronounced by certain journalists and reviewers as apolitical or non-political.  And yet Scotti's footage has been arranged in such a way and has been given from time to time a soundtrack full of British newscasters (from the BBC?) offering up information about what is going on that clearly indicates that this war has been "created" on false pretexts.

Scotti's own narration, whether made at the time of filming or later, makes it plain that our troops were given inadequate protection regarding their vehicles and their "armor."  Yet Scotti maintains that the marines "all love what we fucking do!"  Which prompts one to ask, Why?  All this is hardly a- or non-political. The first thing one wonders while watching all this is, Why only now?  Could this film not have been released a year -- or two or four -- earlier?  I suppose not, given the amount of censorship that exists in our government and society. Scotti himself remarks at one point in the film that all the "journalists" he's seen in Iraq (embedded, of course) are doing PR rather than any real reporting.

Not to worry.  Soon enough a chaplain is anointing the soldiers with oil, as he blesses them for battle.  How biblical!  How co-joined are church and state!  One of the strongest segments has Scotti telling us about (and showing us) the dead bodies, the sewage, and the flies that land on those bodies and then come to rest on the food that our boys are chowing down. They get sick.  No surprise.  We're treated to some not very profound statements such as, "I once read that in war bad things happen.  Ain't that the motherfuckin' truth."  Well, yes it is.  Next?

Eventually, the phrase "I can't wait to get out of this fucking place!" is heard over and over again, and we can't disagree. Then the looting starts,  the priceless treasures of the museum are ransacked, and we hear Rumsfeld complaining... about how disgusting the press is for reporting all this.  And this movie is not political?!  Upon their return to the U.S., Scotti tells us that our boys are "filled with one thing: anger. There were no WMDs,  no imminent threat to our country?"

And yet, at the finale, Scotti insists that, were he called up again, he would go,  "Not for the President.  Nor for our country.  But for the corp.  That's all you can trust."  Which makes him what -- some kind of mercenary?  Forget the fact that your "country" (aka: its leaders) might be dead wrong about what it is doing; if you're willing to go off and kill for no other reason that your buddies are doing it, too, this is... uh, disturbing.  But quite real, I suspect.  And can post-traumatic stress syndrome be far behind?

I wonder what  it might have been like to see Scotti's raw footage with only his own, at-the-time, narration -- and no other bells and whistles attached?  Not that Mr. Fraga has not given us a very interesting, upsetting documentary.  But as is more and more apparent these days, documentaries and "the truth" can reside uneasily in a space every bit as manufactured as that of any narrative film.

Severe Clear opens today, Friday, March 12 at New York City's Angelika Film Center and San Diego’s Gaslamp Stadium