Hence this movie provides the emotional, psychological connection I was looking for but missing in the otherwise excellent "Frontline" specials. American soldiers appear sporadically, as something foreign, vaguely threatening, otherworldly, and as viewers we are led to identify with the Iraqis we see. The movie immerses us into the world of the Iraqi people whose stories it chooses to tell. That is to say, there are no talking head interviews, no outside narrator to impose form (the only voiceovers we hear are those of the subjects themselves), no sidestepping from a singular focus on the subject at hand. Ironic that Iraq in Fragments sometimes feels far from documentary in form when in fact it is almost purely documentary in the strictest sense.
FRAGMENTS MOVIE 2008 FREE
Form scrupulously echoes content and the free flow of impressions and experiences and images and sounds is liberating and indeed startling after experiencing so many informationally-focused documentaries. Each fragment is poetic in texture, ranging from the distracted sadness of the little boy to the fierce, frenetic violence of the militias to the cozy pastoral lives of the Kurds. The second fragment does not focus on one individual but rather the collective passion of the Shiites in Iraq's South as they coalesce around Moqtada al-Sadr to discover their post-Saddam identity.The third and final fragment travels to the north, visiting with Kurdish peasants who bake bricks, herd goats, and rush to polling places when they get the chance to vote, hoping to stake a claim on their own land. The first fragment follows a little Sunni boy in Baghdad - he has difficulty in school and works for a machinist who is alternatively tough-loving and physically rough. Iraq in Fragments exists in three fragments of its own.
FRAGMENTS MOVIE 2008 SERIES
This is a good movie with which to draw my election series to a close, because it's a reminder of the humanistic and individualistic elements underpinning politics and world affairs.the soul in the body politic. Much of the film has the feel of narrative fiction, but by sidestepping continuity - the cutting is impressionistic, the sound design musical, the photography close-quartered and graceful - the movie avoids most of the compromises inherent in documentary form. Iraq in Fragments presents the documentary as art film, in an unusual but captivating approach. Insinuating himself into various Iraqi populations, he formulated a graceful, poetic film which feels as different from other Iraq docs as a verse feels from a newspaper article.
Mid-decade, filmmaker James Longley took his small camera to Iraq, where he shot, directed, and sound-recorded, and later composed music for and co-edited, a truly fascinating movie.
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