Taxi to the Dark Side (2007), written and directed by Alex Gibney, presents a somber and dark look at the cruel and unusual punishment prisoners were subjected to while being held in captivity by the United States in the Bagram Air Base, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo Bay in 2003-2004. This academy award-winning documentary includes interviews with some of the soldiers (who didn’t ‘know any better’), as well as their lawyers, and also, according to Gibney, a look at the Bush Administration’s gross incompetence while trying to handle these situations.
The documentary begins by focusing on an Afghan taxi driver, named Dilawar. While he was working, he was arrested with the three passengers in his taxi on suspicion of being behind a terrorist attack on a nearby American base. Only five days after he was arrested he was found dead in his cell. The cause? Beatings he received while being interrogated by U.S. soldiers. His story segues into an examination of the sadistic and abusive treatment prisoners received while in captivity at Bagram, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. Gibney breaks his documentary up into different segments that focus on specific details pertaining to the interrogation techniques used and allowed, consequent deaths, and the soldiers involved.
Gibney uses interviews with soldiers who took part in these events, photographs from the different bases and archival footage to tell his story. He has the soldiers explain, from their perspective, what happened and why. I thought it was a strange but interesting technique that he used the soldiers, who were accused of the inhumane treatment, to explain the events and give the audience some understanding that they are not the only ones at fault. It is obvious to the viewers that the soldiers feel remorse and guilt from their actions. However, it was off-putting that some of the soldiers tried to make excuses for what happened by saying that they were under pressure to such indecency.
To take it one step further, I think it would be impossible to try to convince anyone that what those soldiers did was not outright wrong. Gibney keeps true to the role of the documentary in that he is able to tell his story without forcing his views onto the audience. He lets the story speak for itself.
Although the images shown of the camps and testimony given by the soldiers is grave and all together horrendous, Gibney still manages to add at least one amusing element: the Bush Administration. The way they acted during these incidents is just funny in a very sad way. For example, Gibney uses Donald Rumsfeld to prove his point. He shows an instance where Rumsfeld had signed off on an interrogation methods memo and at the bottom he left a note. He comments on the interrogation technique to force the person in question to stand for four hours straight. In this note he says that he stands for eight hours a day behind his desk, implying that four hours is something to wave your feather at. Twisted, I thought. Gibney is able to use these facts effectively to convince even the most conservative viewer that these incidents could have been handled in a more sensitive way.
Gibney also uses a series of cuts to portray the government, Bush in particular, as either completely incompetent or just simply ignoring the situation facing them. This is a technique often used by filmmakers and the news networks- to create a certain image or representation of a person by using clips out of context. Gibney, and so many other filmmakers and broadcasters have done does this, portraying the Bush Administration as a bunch of bungling idiots (i.e. ALL of Michael Moore’s films, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, etc.) that I’m beginning to think that you could take anything they did during his presidency and make it look like an event that they lacked the necessary skill to carry it out properly.
Gibney’s documentary is very similar to Errol Morris’ new documentary Standard Operating Procedure (2008), which chronicles the events at Abu Ghraib and the atrocities committed there. After seeing numerous clips from SOP and watching Taxi to the Dark Side, I recommend that people interested in this subject pick one to watch. They both basically tell the same story, and have equally haunting images. Both use recreations to help the viewer start to fathom what happened; however the recreations are more prevalent in SOP. If you’re looking for a little more information about the different torture camps, then I recommend Gibney’s piece. If you’re mainly looking for the stories of the reasons why the certain perverse photographs were taken, then SOP is the better choice.
Either way, prepare yourself for an emotional rollercoaster with daunting images and facts that will make your insides squirm and your outsides cringe.
3 Government Blunders out of 5
(After seeing parts from SOP, I wasn’t that affected by Taxi. I remember first found about these events when I first watched SOP and that it made me sick. But, after being subjected to SOP already, honestly, it was hard to sit through Taxi because I had already seen the terrible images and wasn’t that keen on seeing them again.)
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