Despite constant media attention, Iraq appears to be a faceless nation where the lives of the people are misunderstood. American director James Longley dispels this notion and gives a face to this overexposed nation with his documentary "Iraq in Fragments."
Longley has won several awards for his visually arresting documentary including Best Cinematography, Directing and Editing for a Documentary at Sundance. Shot over more than two years, "Iraq in Fragments" follows three narrators -- from the city of Baghdad to the south of Iraq, finally ending in the Kurdish north. The overarching narration progresses from the views of a child, to the voice of an adolescent man and a politically motivated people, to finally ending with the unrecognized hopes of the elderly.
Part I, "Mohammed of Baghdad," begins with the sight of double-decker buses and the glint of rusted metal in the sunlight against the backdrop of ramshackle buildings. The scene is paralleled with the line, "It was so beautiful. The bridges. The river. The fish. Now there is nothing. It was so beautiful." It is this motif, the sense of loss of a better time, which characterizes the city of Baghdad.
Mohammed, whose situation is not uncommon, was raised by his grandmother and mother but calls his boss his father. His real father was arrested due to his occupation as a policeman and former lieutenant under Saddam. Mohammed describes how he saw his father on TV in the custody of the American soldiers -- they searched his hair, his beard and inside his mouth. The repercussions of this on a young child are presented in Mohammed's unwillingness to learn how to spell his father's name.
The men in the industrial yard, where Mohammed spends most of his time, act as his father figures. They talk about the humanitarian aid, or the lack thereof. They want to know where it is, and one of the men in a fit of dark humor asks his friends, "Did you get some? Or you?" Mohammed is constantly privy to these discussions and it is obvious his thoughts and feelings about the circumstances that have befallen Iraq and Baghdad come from the older men around him, men who are calling for unity between the Shiites and the Sunnis.
In the south the people are also calling for unity. Except they see unity in the guise of the Shiite religion. Moqtada Sadr, the son of an outspoken and influential religious leader whom Saddam assassinated, leads the Shiite political movement.
Their mission is first to stop the U.S. from instituting a puppet government by holding regional elections. Secondly they "want to close every door of depravity opened by America." Thus they go to the market and kidnap all of the vendors who sell alcohol. They take them to a building and they blindfold them, intimidate them and hold their fellow countrymen hostage.
While the revolutionaries and people of the south are fighting against both the occupying forces and each other, the Kurdish community in the north is seemingly removed from the core of the violence. The town of Koretan is the setting in Part III, where Longley emphasizes the themes of the documentary -- unity, fatherhood, education and political gravity.
The Kurds, unlike the rest of the country, see the Americans as liberators. For decades they have been oppressed by the Iraqis and have not been able to achieve their dream of an independent Kurdistan. Despite this the Kurds are of the opinion that there has been enough war in Iraq. The result of successive wars is the division between the Kurds, Sunni and the Shiite; they are the three pieces, the fragments of Iraq.
"Iraq is a country," says the narrator, "How can you cut a country into pieces? With a saw?"
It is with this question that Longley leaves his audience. Several other questions tumble through the mire of thought -- What will become of Iraq? How will its people recover when the country's social infrastructure has been shattered? The answers to these questions are unknown, but what is apparent from Longley's film is that Iraq is not just a faceless, oil-rich nation. There are people who live there, people with lives and dreams, who remember Iraq as a beautiful place.
'Iraq In Fragments' shows Friday at 10:15 p.m. and Saturday at 10:15 a.m.
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