Wednesday, July 18, 2007

MOUSE BROWN 3

Iraq In Fragments (James Longley, 2006)

Essential viewing. This is a voyeuristic portrait of the disastrous and chaotic state of Iraq as seen through the eyes of three cute young boys: a Sunni, a Shia, and a Kurd. The US/UK invading forces' sporadic appearances form a shadowy backdrop throughout that remind me of the Martian tripods in War Of The Worlds (perhaps an apposite analogy if we accept Isaac Asimov's allegorical interpretation of the novel).

And the film's deeply impressionistic stylism, and artistic use of photography and colour, added to the boys' shared viewpoint of lost vulnerability, and the extraordinarily patriarchal society in which they live, all contrive to put the projected fantasy of our daily dose of Western media reports into even starker focus; and the atmosphere throughout at no stage allows for a feeling of comfort.

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