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by A.O. Scott
THE TORTURE MEMOS
January 18, 2008,
NYT
Movie Review
Taxi to the Dark Side (2007)NYT Critics' Pick This movie has been
designated a Critic's Pick by the film reviewers of The Times.
American
soldiers with detainees during an Iraqi dust storm in a scene from Alex
Gibney’s documentary “Taxi to the Dark Side.”
A year from now, the
presidency of George W. Bush will end, but the consequences of Mr.
Bush’s policies and the arguments about them are likely to be with us
for a long time. As next Jan. 20 draws near, there is an evident
temptation, among many journalists as well as politicians seeking to
replace Mr. Bush, to close the book and move ahead, an impulse that
makes the existence of documentaries like Alex Gibney’s “Taxi to the
Dark Side” all the more vital. If recent American history is ever going
to be discussed with the necessary clarity and ethical rigor, this film
will be essential.
Mr. Gibney directed
“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” and was an executive producer of
Charles Ferguson’s “No End in Sight,” films that show the same
combination of investigative thoroughness and moral indignation that
animates “Taxi.” The germ of this documentary’s story is the case of
Dilawar, a taxi driver who was detained in Afghanistan in 2002 and who
died in American custody at the prison in Bagram a few months later.
Though Dilawar was never charged with any crime — and was never shown to
have any connection with Al Qaeda or the Taliban — he was subjected to
horrifically harsh treatment: deprived of sleep; suspended from a grated
ceiling by his wrists; kicked and kneed in the legs until he could no
longer stand.
The film includes
remarkably frank interviews with American servicemen, some of whom faced
courts-martial in connection with Dilawar’s death; with a fellow
prisoner at Bagram; and with Carlotta Gall and Tim Golden, who reported
on Dilawar’s story for The New York Times. “Taxi to the Dark Side,”
however, does not simply recount a single, awful anecdote from the early
days of the war on terror; rather, it traces the spread of a central,
controversial tactic in that war. The burden of Mr. Gibney’s argument,
laid out soberly and in daunting detail, is that what happened to
Dilawar was not anomalous, but rather represented an early instance of
what would soon be a widespread policy.
From Bagram in 2002,
“Taxi to the Dark Side” charts a path to Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib,
all the while insisting that the brutal treatment of prisoners in those
places was hardly the work of a few “bad apples,” as Pentagon officials
said. Instead, the sexual humiliation, waterboarding and other
well-documented practices were methods sanctioned at the very top of the
chain of command. How those methods were intended to work — to break
down psychological defenses, to induce not only physical discomfort but
also a kind of madness — is laid out in interviews with behavioral
scientists, and also with professional interrogators and their victims.
Though Mr. Gibney’s
own views are evident throughout, he does allow those who defend the use
of torture on legal and strategic grounds to have their say. By now,
surely, the empty semantic debate about the appropriateness of the word
torture has been settled, but it is still important to recall that in
the months after the 9/11 attacks, the willingness to consider the
necessity of extreme and previously taboo tactics was widespread. It was
Vice President Dick Cheney who noted in a television interview that the
fight against Islamic extremism would necessitate a trip to “the dark
side,” as administration lawyers prepared (and later publicly defended)
briefs and memos limiting habeas corpus and the applicability of the
Geneva Conventions.
“Taxi to the Dark
Side” includes an interview with the former Justice Department official
John Yoo and clips of former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and
former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales responding to their critics.
And its essential fair-mindedness (which is not the same as neutrality)
strengthens the film’s accounting of the consequences, both strategic
and moral.
Jack Clooney, a
longtime F.B.I. interrogator, argues that kindness can be a more
effective way to manipulate a prisoner and gain information than
cruelty, while young men who worked at Bagram and Abu Ghraib testify to
the atmosphere of sadism in those places. Their matter-of-fact tone
provides, in some ways, the most powerful support for Mr. Gibney’s view
of the corrosive effects of torture on American traditions of decency
and the rule of law.
His film is long,
detailed and not always easy to watch. Plenty of moviegoers would
happily pay not to think about the issues raised in “Taxi to the Dark
Side.” But sooner or later we will need to understand what has happened
in this country in the last seven years, and this documentary will be
essential to that effort.
“Taxi to the Dark
Side” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult
guardian) for disturbing images and content involving torture and
graphic nudity.
TAXI TO THE DARK
SIDE
Opens on Friday in
New York and Los Angeles.
Written, directed
and narrated by Alex Gibney; directors of photography, Maryse Alberti
and Greg Andracke; edited by Sloane Klevin; music by Ivor Guest and
Robert Logan; produced by Mr. Gibney, Eva Orner and Susannah Shipman;
released by ThinkFilm. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes.
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