Two True Pictures of the Terror War
During World War II, Frank Capra made a series of films called "Why We Fight" to rally Americans behind the war effort. Imagine a filmmaker doing that today. Actually, it's impossible to imagine. Hollywood either prefers to stay away from the war on terrorism altogether (the film version of Tom Clancy's "The Sum of All Fears" changed the villains from Islamist extremists to neo-Nazis) or to use it, even in its pre-9/11 form, as a morality play to warn against lost civil liberties (see "The Siege," starring Denzel Washington).
The film community -- whose exquisite sensibilities are routinely outraged by the treatment of snail darters or swamps (a.k.a. wetlands) -- can't even work up much excitement about a Dutch filmmaker getting slaughtered, allegedly by a Muslim fanatic. Where were the rallies and memorials to protest Theo van Gogh's murder?
The lack of outrage should be no surprise because the most successful movie made about the war on terrorism might as well have been titled "Why We Shouldn't Fight." I refer, of course, to "Fahrenheit 9/11," which smarmily insinuated that the Bush administration posed a bigger threat to the world than Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein ever did.
Some conservatives have produced their own documentaries in reply to Michael Moore's grotesque mendacity, but the best answer comes from two honest, nonpartisan films that depict different aspects of the current struggle. If you want to know why we fight, check out the movie "Osama" and the documentary "Voices of Iraq."
"Osama," the first film made in liberated Afghanistan, opens with a scene of Taliban enforcers breaking up a demonstration by burka-clad women upset about their inability to work. The action then shifts to a hospital that is being closed, throwing a female doctor out of work. Without a male wage earner in the family -- both her husband and brother have been killed -- starvation looms. So she cuts her 12-year-old daughter's hair and sends her out to work disguised as a boy called Osama.
Director and writer Siddiq Barmak's understated style convincingly conveys the horror of daily life under the Taliban. Marina Golbahari, a street urchin whose father was arrested by the Taliban in real life, invests the title role with an authenticity that no mere actress could hope to match.
