Cinematical

A few minutes into the new documentary, My Country, My Country, there's an astonishing scene in which an Iraqi clinician, Dr. Riyadh, talks his way into a heavily fortified Army barracks and is granted a meeting with some Army functionaries in order to vent his anger over the violence in Fallujah. This is 2004, shortly after the siege there, and immediately before the commencement of Iraq's first post-Baathist election, which will be conducted amidst raging confessional and ethnic violence. As we see in the film, some militia members even pledge to mow down voters en masse if they dare to stand out in the sun, waiting to dip their fingers into purple ink. Why Dr. Riyadh is granted a meeting with the Americans at such a high-tension moment is not clear; it may be because he happens to be a candidate for elective office or because he's being tailed by an American camera crew. What is clear is that in the short sit-down that follows, he shames his counterparts with terse, cut-and-dry language and inarguable statements. "This is not Vietnam," he pleads. "These people have no food, no blankets, and no roof...this is a process of mass killing." The marine sitting across from him, in bulging combat gear, immediately answers back with rehearsed, insulting religio-babble: "I've heard everything you've said and it touched me in my heart." In other words, meeting adjourned.

What documentarian Laura Poitras shows us in this film is something we already knew, but couldn't visualize -- that the occupation of Iraq requires a Herculean effort to sustain itself. This message is conveyed not through the blather of narration, but through carefully chosen images, such as an imposing, heavily armored ballot convoy barreling along a desolate highway littered with overturned cars. All that force projection just to transport little slips of paper? We also see Marines peeking cautiously out of the port holes of Humvees as they ride down a Baghdad thoroughfare. Just providing minimal security for voters on election day is shown to require massive amounts of planning and skullduggery. Australian James Bond-type contractors are dispatched north with orders from the military to buy large caches of weapons from the Kurdish Peshmerga. We watch them negotiate: "The AK-47 normal, 200-250. Where is that made?" "We have Russian and we have Chinese." "Russian is better." "Of course." Back in Baghdad, the officers tasked with assisting Iraqis on voting day inspire less confidence. One sunburned, bespectacled officer shows a complicated tree diagram to his colleagues, the purpose of which is to deconstruct "Joe Reasonable Iraqi," a person none of them seems to believe exists. Another officer, training Iraqi election workers, ends up alarming them by ad-libbing that this election will be "the best show in the world." Show? Hands immediately go up, demanding to know if the officer just admitted that the election is nothing but a show.

This kind of culture-clash fatigue is omnipresent in the film; Poitras, through her expert craftsmanship, illuminates a quicksand of collective impatience and misunderstanding that has curled around the toes of the military and begun to move steadily up its ankles. This may be inevitable in occupation, but the process in this case is exacerbated by a lack of clear goals and focus. The question of what dividends are being paid by our current course of action in Iraq is one the film asks without being boorish or preachy, and without pre-ordaining the answer. Have we reached the point of diminishing returns in this engagement? Did we reach it long ago? Certainly we all can agree that the funding required to sustain this enterprise has become breathtaking. Anyone who's ever wondered how this adventure could burn money as fast as it does should see My Country, My Country just for the scene inside an Iraqi Reconstruction Office where, as in a casino count room, money is poured out in neat ten thousand-dollar cutlets, wrapped, bagged and distributed. The ease with which we see it done suggests that it's done all day long, and well into the night.

When voting day finally comes, the military is ordered to pull back from polling stations, to diminish a perception that they are encouraging or discouraging any particular parties from showing up if they choose. The Riyadh family meets the day with good spirits and gallows humor. One of the children suggests with a smile that kerosene might be employed to get rid of the purple ink stain, which could mark the bearer for death if the wrong person sees it. Another laughs nervously, slicing her purple finger across her throat. She's clearly not kidding when she says she's already taken a shower to try to scrub the stain off. Another holds her palm outstretched, eyeing the stain as if she were trying on a wedding ring. She never takes her eyes off it. The older family members are more circumspect; their eyes seem to float continually back towards the cascading violence on Al-Jazeera. Dr. Riyadh, having spent the film debating his chances in the election and dreaming about the future, finally returns home, alive and well. He walks and talks like a man whose confidence and dignity have been somewhat restored. Something the war took out of him has been put back in, at least in small part. As one of his daughters walks by, he asks confidently: "Who did you vote for, my dear?" She responds: "I voted for you. Shouldn't something enter my pocket?"