Iraq in Fragments

Iraq in Fragments is a film by James Longley about life in Post-Invasion Iraq.

My first impression of the film, from the first couple of seconds and minuets, was that this film is just beautifully shot. I mean, the cinematography just blew my mind. Longley's Cinéma vérité style brings you up close to the subjects for an intimate look into their reality. The fantastic imagery never let up for the whole film. I'd say this film is worth watching just for that.

The film show three perspectives in post-invasion Iraq, one Sunni, one Shia, one Kurdish. The is no narrative to the film, instead the subjects are left to speak for themselves. The first and third segments seemed very personal to me, with the second striving to show a larger picture within the city of Najaf just before the local Shia militias came into conflict with American forces.

The first segment follows an illiterate 11 year-old Sunni boy in Baghdad trying to earn a living and attend school, and the man who the boy works for. The boy has a very hard time striking a balance between his job and school because he needs to work to survive and as a result struggles to learn anything, leading to scorn from his boss. The segment seems to establish a theme that will resurface throughout the rest of the film, that of the politics of survival: that immediate needs will always take precedence over things like education, personal enrichment and planning for the future. (Personally, I think this is a theme that anyone working with or on behalf of marginalised groups or populations should pay special attention to...) A second theme to be established here is that of a distrust towards those who wield power. In this particular segment, the power is held by the American forces occupying Baghdad and to a lesser extent, the Coalition Provisional Authority. The boy's boss and the other men films all echo the opinion that although life under Saddam was repressive, they were safer and more secure then they are now under occupation. They feel that the occupation will do nothing to improve the lives of ordinary Iraqis, and will only benefit those in power and the American's who 'only want to set up a military base and take Iraq's oil'. One wonders whether or not these ordinary Iraqis differentiate between the occupation benefiting the soldiers on the ground and benefiting the U.S. government and business.

The second segment takes place in the Shia city of Najaf in the lead up to the August 2004 battle between the U.S. Military and Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army (I'm not too sure of the amount of influence al-Sadr has over the Mahdi Army, you may want to look that up yourself...) . Throughout the segment you can hear gunfire between the two sides in the distance as the people in the city try to go about there normal buisness. This segment seems less personal then the other two, but you still get a sense of being in the middle of the events as they unfold. Again, the distrust of those in power (and those who would seek to acquire power) is very strong. The segment follows rallies and sermons warning of the motives of the occupation, the U.S. and provisional authorities, as well as a raid by the Mahdi Army to arrest alcohol-sellers in the city's market. This segment also shows a split between those who enthusiastically follow al-Sadr, and those who are very weary of his leadership. Again, the sentiment that people were safer under Saddam surfaces.

The Third 'fragment' is filmed in Kurdistan, northern Iraq. It follows an elderly father and his sons. Here, the sentiments are more pro-U.S. then in the other segments, and the mistrust is focused on the local authorities who run the region with much more autonomy then other areas of Iraq. The father speaks much about how the businessmen and local politicians are 'growing fat' off the backs of regular Kurds. His son, like the boy from the first segment must also balance work, to support his ageing father and family, and schooling. The difference being that in being much more secure (in safety, food, shelter and income) then people in Southern Iraq and he is able to focus more on his studies in hopes of one day becoming a doctor. The segment in the north was shot at the time of the 1st national election, and the film visits a polling station where some are being dragged out of the lines by authorities, and those who are waiting to vote are told by poll workers to 'vote for this party, its the Kurdish one'.

All and all, I'd say the film shows perspectives of Iraq that would be rarely seen otherwise. If films like Gunner Palace and Occupation Dreamland are about the American experience in Iraq, this film is about the Iraqi experience. One thing that many viewers may find notoriously absent in the film is female voices, with a brief scene of the wife of a man arrested in the Najaf market being the only time a woman speaks to the camera. According to IMDb, a fourth segment following a single mother with a son dying of AIDS was cut from the movie, in favour of being made into it's own film...

All the footage was all shot between 2003 and 2005, meaning that as hard as life may have been at the time in Baghdad and Najaf, it's since become much more dangerous.

My recommendation would be to watch this film, otherwise you'll be missing out.

-30-
Mike.
"We only wear black, but that's just until something darker comes along..."
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