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Iraq in Fragments
Documentary depicts postwar Iraq as hopelessly
divided
DVD Review by Kam Williams
 In
the wake of World War I, when the League of Nations granted Great
Britain the area of the Middle East then known as Mesopotamia, a new
nation was created by cobbling together lands containing a trio of
incompatible ethnic groups: the Shiites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds. Now
some 90 years later, Irag appears to be on the brink of breaking back up
into three separate entities, the Bush Administration's
self-congratulatory pronouncements about having brought democracy to the
region notwithstanding.
Anyone interested in a reality check about the region need only check
out Iraq in Fragments, a sobering documentary which delineates
the dire prospects of a land rapidly losing any semblance of peace,
patience, or hope for civilized discourse. Presented in three parts from
the Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish perspectives, the movie makes it clear
that none of these groups considers itself to be better off since the
American invasion.
The subjects interviewed here may have some hostility for members of
other minorities, but they all appear to hate America more, even the
Kurds. They uniformly desire that the occupiers to leave, because it has
become clear to them that the United States' only interest is in
securing the oil, not the well-being of Iraqis.
Besides analyzing this political tug-of-war, the film features a few
up close and personal vignettes. The first revolves around an 11
year-old orphan who is being exploited by the abusive owner of an auto
repair garage. The second shows some of mullah Muqtada al-Sadr's
henchmen carting off, at gunpoint, a merchant they suspect of selling
liquor. The final segment shows fed-up Kurds saying they were actually
better off under Saddam. A heartbreaking assessment of Iraq's
reconstruction from the point-of-view of its intended beneficiaries.
  Excellent
Unrated
In Arabic, Kurdish and English with subtitles
Running time: 161 minutes
Studio: Typecast Releasing
DVD Extras: Director's commentary, interview with the director, short
films, and trailer.
Click here to read about a group of
Alphas in Iraq
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 Lloyd
Kam Williams is a syndicated film and book critic who
writes for 100+ publications around the U.S. and Canada. He is a member of
the African-American Film Critics Association, the New York Film Critics
Online, the NAACP Image Awards Nominating Committee, and Rotten Tomatoes. In
addition to a BA in Black Studies from Cornell, he has an MA in English from
Brown, an MBA from The Wharton School, and a JD from Boston University. Kam
lives in Princeton, NJ with his wife and son.
IMDiversity and THE BLACK COLLEGIAN are committed to presenting diverse points of view.
However, the viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of
the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or
employees at IMDiversity, Inc. |
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