Film criticism or Op-Ed piece: Armond White and the smugness of torture victims

A question for all of you — where does film criticism end, and knee-jerk reactionary political diatribe begin?

NY Press film critic Armond White has suggested, on several occasions, that certain film critics should recuse themselves from reviewing a particular film for one reason or another, and it's not uncommon for him to direct his criticism at his peers, rather than the film itself. Yet if ever a critic should have walked away from an assignment, it would have to be Armond and his not-even-half-hearted attempt at "reviewing" Michael Winterbottom's The Road to Guantanamo.

Like Christopher Hitchens before him, Armond's politics went all funny after 9/11, and his blind, unyielding support of Bush, the administration, and the so-called war on terror has left many scratching their heads in wonder. That Armond loathed Winterbottom's film is hardly surprising, but never before has he sunk to such wretched lows as witnessed in this vicious attack piece. Not only are there factual blunders (does the NY Press no longer employ editors?), but Armond even betrays himself by denying the film's humanitarianism — the very thing he's criticized other films for lacking.

Beginning with the inaccurate claim that the Tipton Three were in Afghanistan on 9/11 (they were still in England at the time), Armond reduces the film to a "whacked-out piece of anti-American propaganda, pretending Human Rights rhetoric", and goes on to call it "a Weapon of Crass misInstruction." Pretty typical of White's snarl, and nothing like the reprehensible sentence that follows, one that even he should be ashamed of — "Using the Tipton Three’s smugness to discredit the Bush administration, the film condemns the U.S. military for treating al-Qaeda suspects worse than the Taliban brutalized the Mideast."

Where to begin? First off, that Armond sees fit to drop an S-bomb (one of the most favored weapons in his arsenal) when referring to victims of illegal imprisonment and torture is sickening, and to equate the members of the Tipton Three with young film critics and Noah Baumbach characters is simply asinine. But his contempt for the three young men that exposed some ugly truths about our country's policies is further revealed when he criticizes them for remaining "arrogantly defiant" throughout the whole ordeal. I guess Armond would rather they confessed. To something. Perhaps he forgot that they were released without any charge.

Allegations of smugness aside, White also appears to be justifying the use of torture on al-Qaeda suspects, for chaining somebody to a hook on the floor and bombarding them with strobe lights and death metal is not nearly as bad as the barbaric acts of the Taliban. Huh? Does one have anything to do with the other?

If The Road to Guantanamo is a work of propaganda, then its cause is humanitarianism. The film is less interested in the guilt/innocence of the Tipton Three than it is with humanitarian treatment and the rule of law. Love Bush or hate him, holding people for years at a time without charging them is in breach of international law and the Geneva conventions on the rights of POWs. Yet Armond, who has lashed out at films and filmmakers for their alleged anti-human stances, here rejects the human rights issue for it clashes with his own political agenda.

It doesn't take The Road to Guantanamo to discredit the Bush administration or to demonize US foreign policy — one only need read a newspaper to reach those conclusions. (Other than the NY Press, of course.) Even by Armond's often over-the-top standards, this "review" is appalling, and would be better suited for the Op-Ed page of The New York Sun than the Film section of any publication.

Even in his infamous review of Fahrenheit 911 (where he labeled Michael Moore a fascist), White spent equal time discussing it as film qua film as he did spewing forth political vitriol. This time, however, there's virtually none of the former. What are your thoughts? Do Armond's inaccuracies and false charges (which he never bothers to back up with examples) add up to a film review, or is it merely an angry political screed?

Comments

[Noel Vera]

Haven't seen the film, but you might be interested in Matt Armstrong's thoughts on the film (which he doesn't like either, but his reasoning is less, well, out there):

Road to Guantanamo

[Kza]

Stupid smug torture victims! Someone should do something to them.

Also, this really gets me:

"a Weapon of Crass misInstruction."

Jesus. The Tipton Three aren't the only ones being tortured here. *Who*, again, is the snake-hipped word slinger, Armond?

[Noel Vera]

Incidentally, Matt wrote a response to the review to White's magazine, and they printed his letter (but cut out much of his reasoning):

Matt Cornell (Hollis Henry's reply is also worth reading)

[matteo]

somebody tell White that Afghanistan is in Central Asia. and that torture is, like, a war crime. Even the Supreme Court appears to be thinking so.

[Thom]

I just read Hollis Henry’s reply and it might help answer the question, Filmbrain. Henry points out White’s failure to write about the film directly but, he also suggests that White’s writing is the result of his having viewed the The Road to Guantanamo: “I suspect this film must be very effective to have reduced [White] to a slavering beast the way it has.”
Perhaps White’s “knee-jerk reactionary political diatribe” can be viewed as a sort of review of the film after all, albeit a weak sort. The film provoked a reaction from White that was so strong he wrote his political rant in reponse to it. In other words, he tells us a lot about how effective and successful the film is at getting its message across and provoking a reaction. However, it appears that he didn't realize that the film manipulated him in this way because he failed to write about it.

[Snake Hips (as of 27 years ago)]

I think calling White's review a "knee-jerk reactionary diatribe" is, well, insulting to authors of genuine knee-jerk reactionary diatribes. What White wrote is more akin to what the leftist "blogofascists" put under the umbrella of "paste-eating." If someone could introduce A.W. to Protein Wisdom's Jeff Goldstein, we could enjoy a veritable fission of nouveau-wingnuttery.

[Andrei]

"Young film critics and Noah Baumbach characters," eh?

[Sal C]

"Where to begin?” indeed. Just this past week I made a decision to stop reading Armond White's reviews. My frustration has reached saturation point and I have enough aggravation in my life without adding to it needlessly by getting pissed off at his increasingly angry, bitter, and short-sighted reviews. I have no problem with differences of opinion, but his arguments have become tedious and reactionary. You could set your watch by his slams of Baumbach and Tarantino or his use of “morality” as a yardstick by which all films should be judged. Even when I agree with him, as on filmmakers like DePalma and Altman, I find him his writing damn near impossible to enjoy.
So, if you feel like I do I suggest you do the same. Stop reading him. Fuck Armond White.

[Andrei]

Man, I knew I didn't get something. My B. I knew that if that was you editorializing, it was uncharacteristic. Armond White thinks that stuff!

[acquarello]

I have to admit that while I don't buy White's expedient dismissal of the Tipton Three as smug, Taliban partisans (and yes, he did get the dates wrong, they travelled to Afghanistan in October, 2001), I actually agree with him on his criticisms of the way Winterbottom and Whitecross use every maniplative technique in their filmmaking arsenal to really hammer the point home: the dizzy, reality TV angles, the faux Watkins docu-fiction styled fake interviews, the swelling music. In terms of the film's style, I'm guessing that White is actually using "smug" in the context of the interview re-enactments which I think does look artificial and staged (in particular, the actor who plays Shafiq is shown leaning back and a bit blank faced, which, because he has a full face, does have a Godfather-like smug look to him), and not that the Tipton Three were smug in real life or during their detention.

This overwrought approach to what is already a horrific story as-is is what I was alluding to in my criticism of the film that the filmmakers really should have left the victims' words speak for themselves. Instead, they amp up the melodrama factor, and I think it weakens the sincerity of the film and even manipulates the ordeal of the victims to the point of (unneccessary) sensationalism. In hindsight, it seemed as though the filmmakers didn't trust the audience enough to be incited by just documenting the injustice of their plight, and instead, decided to really deploy all the agitprop tools available at their disposal.

[Filmbrain]

Noel --
Thanks for the links to the letters. Glad to see I'm not alone in my reaction. As for Matt Armstrong's review, I'm not a member of that Yahoo group, and it wouldn't let me read it without joining. Has it been posted elsewhere?

Kza said:
*Who*, again, is the snake-hipped word slinger, Armond?
I was SO tempted to use a similar line, but wanted to be nice.

Snake Hips --
"nouveau-wingnuttery" -- you really ought to trademark that.

Sal --
No longer reading Armond is a possibility. But then again, we'd miss hearing how Nacho Libre is evocative of Buñuel's Nazarín.

[Filmbrain]

Acquarello --

It's been a few months since I've seen the film, but I thought the interview segments were with the actual members of the Tipton Three. If that’s correct, then it is their smugness that Armond is alluding to.

As for the filmmaker’s technique -- you make some valid points. However, I feel that sometimes it takes a film like this to get the message out to the masses. The story of the Tipton Three (along with tons of supporting documentation) has been out there for some time, but how many people knew about it? How many people could actually explain the torture methods used at Camp X-Ray? Reading reactions on UK chat boards (where it was shown on television), you see just how angry and disgusted the film made people feel.

Sensationalistic it may be, but I feel it’s no worse than Chimpy McFlightSuit on an aircraft carrier. We live in a time when the image is far more powerful than the word.

It's not that I wish to avoid the discussion (I've been thinking about writing a separate post on that very subject), but I wanted to focus on Armond's review, and how his political bent led him to write something that ignores facts, and shows an utter disrespect for the victims.

I still can't get over the "arrogantly defiant" comment. I really want to know what he meant by that.

[Filmbrain]

Just came across this story from today's AP wire:

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees, saying in a strong rebuke that the trials were illegal under U.S. and international law.

Oops...

[acquarello]

Oh, I completely agree with you that it's a particularly wretched piece of criticism if the reader has to read between the political myopia and tangential obfuscation to try to get something relevant to the film beyond the diatribe.

Yeah, the filmmakers' use of actors for the interviews instead of the real victims was the head-scratcher for me, I'm not sure why they did that. You make a good point about the context of the film playing on British TV though, the audience is certainly more "mass market" than would have been for the Human Rights Watch festival. Incidentally, a couple of years ago, HRW screened the documentary Persons of Interest on similar issues of indefinite detention of ethnic Moslems in New York shortly after 9/11, and that still remains for me the most eye opening film on this specific issue that I've seen.

So, is it fair to say that you won't be attending Armond's annual pop culture flatulence at NYVF? :)

[Toto]

Sure the film is a bit of a diatribe. As such it is very effective. It is an illustration of the stories recounted in the interviews throughout. That's all. It's certainly enough. Their story has been recounted in this way at face value. I've read critiques claiming that this does not provide any form of independent verification, so the viewer cannot tell how much of their story is fact. We only have their word to rely on. To a degree this is true, but it's no lie to say these people did disappear for two years after travelling to Pakistan and then reappear from Guantanamo. That does add some credibility to their story.

The point is this film is supposed to be telling their account: that's obvious. And it's a harrowing and angry account. It certainly doesn't whitewash the Taliban, although the protagonists don't appear to be unsympathetic towards them - more ignorant to start with, then respectful of their devotion to Islam once in the US camp. If anything my impression was that these people started off by being naively stupid. It happens when you're young. "Smug"? I don't think so. But how are you supposed to think after two years of sequestration, with some cruel and degrading treatment thrown in? It struck me that their attitude was more one of confusion faced with the unfairness of it all, and of annealed fervour in their Islamic faith, which is largely to take them at face value. Why shouldn't we?

Interestingly, not all americans are unmitigatedly bad in the film - remember the episode with the scorpion and the almost upbeat episode on rapping. Stockholm syndrome in reverse?

As for the film's technique: are we supposed to stop showing violence? To stop playing background music? All this because we are talking about unsubstantiated stories? Give me a break!

So how is the viewer supposed to respond? If you're American, it depends a lot on how you handle your national pride. If it refuses criticism, justified or not, you'll get the kneejerk reaction of Armond White. It seems he and others feel this as an insult against America. I would prefer to see the criticism itself criticised - investigated, then corroborated or refuted with justification. So is the film an insult or a reality check? That's the question we should be asking ourselves.

[Noel Vera]

Filmbrain:

You can't read the a_film_by messages? I always thought they were possible to access publically.

Here it is:

Saw this last night and found it disappointing. Winterbottom blends talking head interviews of the real Tipton Three with verite-style recreations of the events using actors. It's kind of like a leftist companion piece to UNITED 93, with that film's drawbacks. Winterbottom's efforts at versimilitude and his just-the-facts style actually undercut some of the story's potential emotional and political impact. I wish that he had either made a traditional documentary or a straightforward narrative film. This middle road approach results in a film which feels slight, and a bit too measured.

One of the major problems is that the film's subjects-- three British Muslims captured in Afghanistan and shipped to Gitmo, are remarkably opaque. We get very little sense of them as people and even less sense of their political or religious convictions. Moreover, we're asked to take their account of how they ended up in a Taliban convoy in Kunduz at face value. At best they were incredibly foolish young men, who wandered into a war zone. At worst, they were jihadist ideologues fighting alongside the Taliban. I'm inclined to believe their story, but these seeds of doubt raise a problem for the film.

Since so much of the movie's drama depends on the trio's claims of innocence, Winterbottom misses an opportunity to show that the conditions at Guantanamo are an outrage, regardless of the detainees' guilt. This is the equivalent of an anti-death penalty film hitching its wagon to the condemned's innocence, rather than to exploring the evils of the practice itself.

Winterbottom keeps the narrative going at a dizzying pace, bouncing back and forth between shaky-cam recreations and those talking head accounts. Stylistically, it's a little like MTV's "Real World" crossed with PUNISHMENT PARK. Even at this pace, the film is mostly "road" and only a little bit Guantanamo. The men spent two years on the island, which is represented here by about 30 minutes of screen time. This means that some of the more disturbing interrogation methods employed at Gitmo are barely touched on. Why for instance, does Winterbottom condense 3 1/2 months of solitary confinement into a 20 second montage?

Unfortunately I don't think that this movie has much crossover appeal. Even among those who might be ideologically predisposed, the film's subject matter may be too disturbing to attract a real audience. It's likely that a fuller picture from Gitmo and these other secret facilities will emerge someday. You think about all the personnel-- the doctors, nurses, administrative staff, and the interrogators. It may take years before we know what's really going on in these places, when folks begin to undburden themselves with what they've seen and done. My sense is that the situation is far worse than the few glimpses afforded us by the Tipton Three's accounts. The scenes at the prison only hint at what's been suggested in some reports-- that Guantanamo is less an intelligence-gathering center than a sadistic lab for experimenting on human beings.

[Jason]

I live in London but actually come from a town adjacent to Tipton, where the three prisoners come from. Ultimately, they were extremists. I know the story of their drift towards Islamic fascism and it runs to a similar pattern to the extremism prevalent amongst British Pakistani communities – indoctrination and active engagement abroad, hatred for Jews, America, Hindus, and Britain, an extremism that has taken root and found its greatest fruit in the London suicide bombers last year. They are the same generation, just a few notches different on the continuum of Islamism. In this aspect of the film, Winterbottom is naïve.

However, given that this is a real and present threat to lives and the welfare of our society, this whole episode illustrates to me the utter stupidity of the Bush administration. Gitmo has been not only a human rights abomination, and a deeply sinister site of sadistic injustice, it has also rendered America in the eyes of the world a wicked and deranged oppressor. It has been a massive own goal for America in a situation in which America and the West DOES face a real menace and problem. But by its actions at Gitmo, America has partially lost the moral high ground, at least rhetorically. You cannot talk about justice, democracy and freedom, and have Gitmo in existence. For someone who is actually pro-America like me, it is painful to watch the clueless arrogance of this Bush administration, to see the smirking sneering impudence of Rumsfeld, and it leaves me gasping in wonder at the sheer idiocy of the current American government, that they neither seem to realise or care for what image Gitmo has given to the world of a nation out of control – a government like a mad, sweating, enraged, blind and deaf bull in a China shop, farting and snorting and wrecking its own principles and values and placing every moral victory to the enemy.

For people like me who recognise the real menace of Islamist fascism to our societies, Gitmo represents everything that has gone wrong in the West in its response to the Islamist threat. It makes martyrs out of ideological extremist like the Tipton Three (those interviews are disingenuous) – it eats its own values, it degrades America, ultimately it is a victory for the enemy. Apart from the principles it violates against humanity, it is a very deep and strategic blunder in the struggle against Islamism. That Rumsfeld and Bush do not realize this makes me gasp in wonder at their stupidity and arrogance – in fact, it makes me want to scream. They have been an absolute disaster for America, and a disaster for the very real ideological and security struggle that needs to be waged against extremist right-wing Islamism. How can they be so blind?

[Yan]

I find it striking that this film has been criticized for incorporating recreations based on first person accounts (a number of reviews, even positive ones, have incorrectly referred to these as "fictional" elements), while United 93 got rave reviews, despite being based on very limited factual information and enormous amounts of speculation.

I'm also troubled by the fact that many of the reviews (again, even the positive ones) self-righteously point out the suspiciousness of some of the men's stories--which of course not only entirely misses the point, but perfectly exemplifies it: the reviewers, like the administration and the jackbooted thugs who stick up for them, are in a "guilty until proven innocent" mindframe.

[Noel Vera]

Yan makes an excellent point, I think. I need to actually see the film, tho.

[Toto]

Well, this journalist at Britain's Observer provides an interesting take:

The frightening bit is this:

To date, says producer Andrew Eaton, the film is set to be shown in 18 countries. But as yet, although there have been expressions of interest, there is no distribution deal for the one nation where it most urgently needs to be screened - the United States. One line, barked by guards and interrogators, runs through the film repetitively - 'Shut the fuck up!' At present, it serves as an unintentional metaphor. Faced with international criticism not only for Guantanamo but other outrages, such as the 'extraordinary rendition' of terrorist suspects for torture by friendly Third World dictatorships, much of America has resolutely closed its ears. In the big East Coast papers, and in publications such as the New York Review of Books, the use of torture in the war on terror has been exposed, debated and condemned. Elsewhere, it barely seems to register: in the 2004 election, John Kerry failed to mention Guantanamo even once. Just possibly, the vivid imagery and warm characterisation of The Road to Guantanamo might begin to pierce the carapace.

At the same time, as I watched this familiar story being given such shocking and authentic new life, I could only shudder at the thought of its effect in the Muslim world. Since it opened in 2002, Guantanamo has become a rallying point, cited time and again on Islamist websites and in the Arab press as a justification for creating more suicide 'martyrs'.

David Rose, Using Terror to Fight Terror, The Observer, Feb 26, 2006