Cracks in Iraq

>> Iraq in Fragments is a painful
document of the invasion’s aftermath

by MATTHEW HAYS

When defenders of the invasion of Iraq run out of arguments for the war, they invariably reach for one last straw: aren’t we better off without Saddam Hussein running the country?

Iraq in Fragments, James Longley’s cinéma vérité, Oscar-nominated doc, goes some way towards answering that question. And it does so by asking the people who should be asked, the citizens of Iraq. The doc’s title is a double entendre: the film is broken down into three fragments, in which we examine Iraq’s messy post-invasion state through three different lenses, segments that suggest the country has come to pieces.

Exactly as you’d expect, the portraits that make up Iraq in Fragments are devastating. The first section follows a sweet boy named Mohammed Haithem, who struggles to attend school while working as an apprenticing mechanic. There’s nothing worse than seeing children undergoing a miserable time, and that’s just what happens here. Mohammed is berated as an idiot and a mule because he’s behind in his studies.

The second fragment delves deeply into one of Iraq’s many radical movements, that of Moqtada al-Sadr. With any semblance of a central government or police force gone, groups have moved into the vacuum to create their own bizarre brands of justice. Longley’s access is astonishing in itself: we see men tied up, blindfolded and threatened for crimes it’s entirely unclear they actually committed. It’s vigilante justice gone terribly wrong. Their fate is left unclear—just like the fate of the entire country.

The third segment focuses on the Kurds, who seemed for a while to be the only possible group who might benefit from the invasion. But this fragment becomes all the more poignant given the news from Iraq in recent months, that the Kurds are now facing burgeoning unrest and casualties as well.

Iraq in Fragments has mysteriously few women characters, but it is well worth seeing. And there’s a strange tension that runs throughout, given the stunning images Longley captures: how can a film so beautiful be about something so ugly?

Iraq in Fragments opens at the Cinéma
du Parc this Friday, June 8. Each night
an expert on the war will be present for
a discussion. Details: cinemaduparc.com

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