Film review by Colin Fraser ROAD TO GUANTANAMO |
A dramatised documentary about the Tipton Three - four young lads in Pakistand for a wedding who visit Afghanistand on a whim. Unfortunately, their bus leads them straight to Guantanamo Bay instead. | score 4 |
moviereview rates films from 1 (unwatchable) to 5 (unmissable) |
|
FIND A MOVIEREVIEW |
Cast Riz Ahmed, Farhad Harun, Arfan Usman Director Michael Winterbottom Screenwriter Documentary Country UK Rating / Running Time MA / 95 minutes Australian Release November 2006 Official Site (c) moviereview
2006
ABN 72 775 390 361 |
It
is unlikely that you’ll see a more appalling film this year. The mercurial
Michael Winterbottom (Tristram Shandy, Nine Songs) has turned his cameras on
the plight of four British citizens caught up in the melee following 9/11. Referring
to detainees at Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay, a resilient George W. Bush asserts that
‘these are bad people’. It sets the tone for what becomes theatre of the
absurd. Winterbottom’s dramatised documentary starts some months prior when
four English lads head to Pakistan for a wedding and take an ill-advised
side-trip to Afghanistan. Poor timing found them arriving in Kandahar as
coalition bombs start to fall and their plans are scuttled. Soon they’re
funnelled into a Taliban stronghold and captured by the Northern Alliance when,
suspected of being terrorists, they’re flown to Cuba and held without charge
for over two years. Unashamedly
partisan, Road to Guantanamo is a story
of conviction. Winterbottom cuts talking-heads and dramatic imaginings with
riveting effect. As their misadventure quickly mires in the horrific reality of
war, atrocities are brought into harsh relief. This is a one-sided account and Winterbottom
isn’t shy of demonising coalition troops, or his own government’s horrendous
efforts to hang a crime on innocent men. Emotional abuse and physical torture rain
down while Donald Rumsfeld happily reminds us these conditions are ‘consistent
with the Geneva Convention – for the most part’. As Road to Guantanamo tells the appalling, if shrill story of
democracy unleashed, two ideas take hold: support for coalition governments is
tacit support for the camps of Guantanamo Bay. Human spirit can triumph over
evil. “It destroys you,” said one man, “or it makes you stronger”. // COLIN FRASER |