dir: Gavin Hood
2007
Rendition is, yes, another one of those recent films tagged
=93political=94 by those reluctant to be drawn into the culture wars
(which is, usually, most people) but eager to dismiss something with
the least amount of effort required.
Just in case you thought movies don=92t mean squat unless they=92re based
on something true, Rendition is based on the ordeal of Khaled el-
Masri, a German national of Kuwaiti descent, who was taken from the
Serbian-Macedonian border and held and beaten in prison in Afghanistan
for five months in 2004.
And then released when they figured out that it was Khaled AL-Masri
that they were looking for in the first place. Because if they=92d
beaten that guy for five months, it would have been all right.
The title refers to the use of the term rendition, or extreme
rendition, as applied to the manner in which the CIA can decide some
people with potential information or contacts in the terrorist
community can be snatched up and disappeared as if they never existed.
Then, once they=92re wearing a headbag, they=92re whisked away to a
country where foreigners can torture them for information. See,
America doesn=92t do torture. But if someone else wants to do it for
them, well, why the hell not? It would be the height of ingratitude to
not take advantage of their hospitality and flexible positions on
human rights.
When the person who=92s kidnapped and tortured is just a stinking
foreigner goatherding their way through their family-less and
friendless lives, then it=92s not an issue worthy of being brought to
our notice. But when the guy is a fully fledged America lover with a
pregnant blonde wife (Reese Witherspoon) and a son called Jeremy, then
it=92s really a crying shame and a travesty when the guy is kidnapped
and tortured for his suspected terrorist links.
I=92m not sure exactly where most of this story transpires apart from
the Washington and Chicago bits, but it=92s North Africa at the very
least. Morocco, Tunisia, probably not Algeria, but it hardly matters.
It=92s a place where there are lots of Arab speakers and Muslims living
in hot and dusty climes. Which are, as we know, a recipe for two
things: fundamentalist terrorists and forbidden love.
They=92re also a prime setting for a refresher course in hypocrisy. When
a bomb goes off, threatening the life of a local police official who
doubles as a torturer (Yigal Naor), everyone goes berserk trying to
find the people behind the attack. It=92s not because of a desire to
bring to justice to those responsible for killing 19 people and
maiming many more. It=92s because an American CIA case officer is killed
in the attack.
Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally) is a chemical engineer jet-setting
around the world to industry conferences and symposiums. He=92s been
living in America for twenty years, and has no known connections or
sympathies with terrorists. Just prior to departing from Cape Town in
South Africa, his mobile gets a call that never connects properly. By
the time he gets on his flight back to the States, he=92s already on a
hitlist, and is about to have the most exhilarating and adventurous
week or so of his life.
He is snatched at the airport and questioned rigorously, but without
any hands-on get-to-know-your-insides type questioning. When this
yields nothing, they decide that only torture can give them the
certainty they require. With the approval of a CIA high-up (Meryl
Streep), Anwar jets off to a hellhole where torture is not only
doable, but something worthy of putting in the Lonely Planet guide as
an additional aspect of local colour.
Anwar=92s wife goes berserk, and tries to influence anyone she can in
order to find out where her husband is and why. She looks up a former
flame (Peter Sarsgaad) who works as an aide to a wily senator (Alan
Arkin), neither of whom are willing to be seen as being soft on
terrorism by sticking up for someone accused of being a terrorist.
Anwar=92s torturer, Abasi Fawal is not a sadistic man, or at least he
doesn=92t appear to be. He is the spitting image of Telly Savalas,
nonetheless, so he is quite an imposing presence. He is, all the same,
a man comfortable with tormenting suspected terrorists in order to
weed out any information they might possess. If they don=92t give up
anything worthwhile, then they weren=92t being tortured hard enough. And
if they die, well, they=92ve only got themselves to blame anyway.
All the old favourites are brought to bear on Anwar: naked, constantly
hobbled with shackles, stress positions, thrown into a hole too
cramped to lie down or sit up straight in, drowning (which is what
=91waterboarding=92 actually is, there=92s no simulation about it) slapped
around and beaten, and, eventually, the loving kiss of electricity.
Other people pay a fortune to have people do this kind of stuff to
them in elite health spas and dominatrix dungeons, and here=92s Anwar
getting it all for free, the ungrateful bastard.
Why=92s he holding out? Doesn=92t he know he=92s just making it harder on
himself? His continued lack of confession is seen as even more of an
admission of guilt than if he=92d actually confessed to something
grandly terroristic. I mean, that means perfect sense to me.
All through these, um, vigorous questionings, a young American CIA
analyst (Jake Gyllenhaal) watches with barely disguised revulsion.
It=92s for him that this nasty work is being done, but he doesn=92t seem
to be too happy about it. He never really gets into it, and becomes a
walking zombie of a man, depressed not because of the lack of
information, but because it=92s occurring in the first place. Even when
it starts looking as if it could be leading to results, he faces the
decision that no-one else in the entire world seems willing to make.
As was the title of the recent Kings of Leon album, it=92s Because of
the Times. It=92s because of these times in which we live where there
don=92t seem to be any bridges too far in terms of what is seen as being
allowable in the carrying out of this nebulous War on Terror. If the
terrorists, freedom-hating, Ronald MacDonald-punchers that they are,
have no restrictions on the atrocities they are willing to commit, why
should nation-states have to pull their punches? When Gyllenhaal=92s
character bitches about the unreliability of torture for information
gathering purposes , that character tells him =93We have a saying, =93beat
your wife every morning: you don=92t know why, but she knows.=94
In other words, the mentality is that they don=92t want actual or
potential terrorists thinking that they=92ll be treated gently if
they=92re ever captured. Even when they=92re not guilty of anything, they
should dread every interaction and fear for more than their lives and
their family=92s lives every day.
Fighting terrorism with terrorism. Prove to me it doesn=92t work. I know
that whenever there=92s a fire in my kitchen, what I like to do is bring
out the flamethrower to put out the conflagration. It=92s bound to work
eventually.
Rendition struck a lot of people as simplistic and a polemic exercise
because it constructs a drama around the idea of someone enjoying
rendition at the behest of the CIA in the contemporary political
climate. In other words, it=92s one sided and preaching only to the
converted who already believe torture is always wrong, and that all
the euphemisms in the world can=92t change it, whether you call it
torture or enhanced interrogation.
Frankly, I=92m perplexed at the way in which critics dismissed this
flick. It=92s well made, it does speak plainly and openly about a
situation as it has existed since the Clinton Administration and way
before that, and puts the lie to the idea that the United States can
simultaneously fight for human rights and democracy the world over
when it condones and benefits from torture. It doesn=92t even come down
to who should do what in a world gone mad over terrorism. It
dramatically puts together a story where a guy gets tortured with
little evidence yet gets trapped in a Kafkaesque nightmare whereby
innocence counts for nothing, and yet it=92s seen as unfortunate but
justifiable by those in positions of power.
It makes my blood boil and my teeth hurt. I wonder how it is that
people can still argue that there are situations that could
potentially justify torturing someone for information (the ticking
time bomb scenario), despite the really obvious point that there isn=92t
a single documented case of when such a thing has happened and saved
countless lives. Because the beauty of these circular arguments is
that these circumstances would be classified top secret anyway! So the
Powers That Be simply allude to situations where it might have
happened without having to substantiate specific instances, and then
everybody=92s happy!
About the only time I can remember a film making the pro-torture
argument seem almost credible was a classy flick with Nicolas Cage and
Shirley McClain called Guarding Tess, where she played a former First
Lady under Secret Service protection in her twilight years. She ends
up being kidnapped (Spoiler Alert!), and Cage=92s character shoots
someone in the foot to find out where she has been buried alive.
Only real heroes can make the hard decisions.
Since then it has been standard procedure by the intelligence services
once it passed into law. The legislation was further backed up with a
sterling legal foundation once the Jack Bauer Law was passed by both
the Congress and Senate and ratified into law by the President in
honour of the excellent work carried out by Kiefer Sutherland in
keeping America safe from terrorists on the television show 24, one
bullet wound to the leg at a time.
And everything everywhere immediately got better for ever and ever.
And yet a flick where the harrowing tale of a person being disappeared
by the state and tortured (by mistake, as if that makes any
difference) for nothing, is dismissed as a work of propaganda. That
people=92s fatigue with war and terrorism stories renders them deaf and
bored in the face of such movies.
Well, fuck that. I=92ll go on the record saying that the flick is
impressive all around, and probably with the exception of Reese
Witherspoon in her thankless role of the whining wife, everyone does
great work here, even Gyllenhaal, who looks like he was on downers the
whole time. Three storylines are intertwined adeptly and in a
compelling manner, with an added twist that one of the storylines is
occurring in a different time frame to the other two, with an
emotional and crushing climax. The flick has no clear =93good=94 or
=93bad=
=94
guys (excluding the obvious jihadi terrorists, who are obviously bad
guys by default, but the flick=92s not about them), studiously avoids
mindless action sequences, but it does have a lot of people doing and
accepting a lot of morally dubious actions for many different
rationalisations and justifications that don=92t amount to a hill of
beans.
Gavin Hood=92s excellent work here shows me that his debut Tsotsi was no
fluke. If anything Rendition is even more competent as a film and
telling its story, with far more complexity to it. It=92s contemporary,
it =93feels=94 real, it looks great thanks to Australian cinematographer
Dion Beebe, and unlike many of the other contrived flicks that have
come out in the same milieu (Lions for Lambs, Home of the Brave, The
Kingdom), it=92s dramatically satisfying. That=92s more than I can say for
most contemporary flicks about America and its place in this Brave New
Terrorism-Flavoured World.
It=92s a strong film, and one that leaves me with a very strong idea of
what I would beg those who condone this current regime and belief
structure to answer truthfully in response to the issue of torture: If
you can assert that there are situations in which the State can be
justified in torturing people to protect either the State or some
nebulous common good, then you can accept that there are occasions
where they=92re going to get it wrong, and you=92re okay with that. In
that case, do you also accept that if you, or someone you care about
is disappeared and tortured, without oversight or legal recourse or
any hope of salvation, that you=92re okay with that too, since it=92s an
unfortunate but necessary way to win the War on Terror?
Spare me, please. Some arguments don=92t have two sides.
Sandro - 8 pro-torture arguments that are part of the War on Basic
Human fucking Dignity out of 10
--
=93In all the years you've been doing this, how often can you say that
we've produced truly legitimate intelligence? Once? Twice? Ten times?
Give me a statistic; give me a number. Give me a pie chart, I love pie
charts. Anything, anything that outweighs the fact that if you torture
one person you create ten, a hundred, a thousand new enemies.=94 -
Rendition
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