Every couple of months I play a game. My game is going to the movie theatre and choosing the next movie that's starting, regardless of whether or not I know anything about it.
So Saturday, I played the game. And I saw No End in Sight.
The movie is written, produced and directed by Charles Ferguson. The film is his first, but his background is in political science, he's a PH.D and has been a senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute. I'm surprised that this is his first film, since it's so well done, very clean and as "easy to watch" as such a devastating subject matter could be.
That being said, it is not, under any circumstances, easy to watch.
The film begins shortly before September 11, 2001, and follows chronologically the path that the U.S. takes first in Afghanistan, but quickly into Iraq.
What makes this movie great, are the open and honest interviews. There is one great sequence where a well-known official is interviewed question by question in contrast with his predecessor, painting an alarmingly accurate picture of both sides.
The candor of the interviews is startling. One feels as if there is serious remorse in some and none in others. Me, the uber-pacifist, left feeling as if I live in a country that has sanctioned a genocide. I've had my Schindler's list moment: I marched, I protested, I wrote, I called, I gave up my car, but I could have done more.
I feel like we'll never be able to come back from this. How could we?
I also feel like this film will be viewed by countless students, or should be, in the coming years, to educate, to spark discussion, and to perhaps shake people out of the apathy that allows these kinds of people to be elected, leading to such catastrophic results.
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