No End in Sight

Charles Ferguson, USA, 2007
3 out of 4 stars

I was slowly making my way through "Bush's War", a two-part "episode" of PBS Frontline, when I got the notification that this movie would be the next to arrive in my mailbox. The redundancy seemed unfortunate, but I ultimately became so consumed with what I learned in "Bush's War" that I found myself interested in seeing and learning more, so I went ahead and watched the film. The result of all of this is that I found myself in a better position to actually judge No End in Sight on its merits as a work, rather than giving it a knee-jerk four-star rating due chiefly to the shock of what I learned from it.

Instead, I found this documentary to be a solid piece of work, but perhaps a bit undeserving of its de facto status as the flagship Iraq War documentary. Part of this is indeed because Frontline has in fact, it turns out, been doing shows on this stuff for years; "Bush's War" was something of a synthesis of earlier shows, with the focus to some extent being on the decision-making process that led us to war, whereas No End in Sight is more interested in the colossal mistakes made in the beginning of the occupation (there is apparently a Frontline on this subject as well, and director Charles Ferguson even uses a clip from it at one point!). Being that it is PBS, it is also pretty neutral on the face of it; of course, the facts line up to present a picture so damning that there is no real need to lay it on with any extraneous, overt ideological critique.

Ferguson, of course, is not a public television journalist, so he has no need to strive for objectivity; even so, he seems to have sensed that the facts speak for themselves (not something I always believe, mind you, but clearly the case here). The question is, really, whether he has made any use of film as a medium. There seems to be a very small amount of original footage (although who knows how original), but it's mostly a talking-head piece. This is compelling enough, as much of the things we learn are quite shocking, and not all of it was covered at least in the particular Frontline that I saw. The downside to Ferguson's approach and his status is that he is able to get only one unrepentant proponent of the Bush policies. With this guy, he sets up a very theatrical, indirect "confrontation" with one of his key witnesses; the narrator makes a point of informing us that these two men were interviewed again in order to reconcile contradictions between their testimonies. Although contrived, it's also satisfying in that you always wish that these things were actually "resolved" more thoroughly, and the confrontational aspect of it is something that Frontline largely eschews.

Overall, though, this is best suited for television; I really can't imagine watching it in a movie theater (although the occasional use of split screen did render some footage hard to focus on for someone with a modest-sized television). For film, I think I would be more interested in one of the docs that actually focuses on original, on-the-spot footage. Ferguson does augment the work of the PBS journalists, but he ultimately comes off as a little redundant. All that said, you're more likely to want to see this film then you are to watch three hours of "Bush's War" on streaming video, so on that basis alone I recommend it; this is stuff you need to know, and you will be better off, albeit angrier, for having seen it.

Source: Red Envelope DVD
29 April, 9:41 PM