Before Hussein took over the government -- which is where we meet him, in 1979 -- and went to war with Iran and alienated the West and attacked the Kurds and so on, he was known as a successful reformer, establishing literacy programs, compulsory education and an improved healthcare system. "House of Saddam" thoroughly charts his fall from power to powerlessness, but less successfully catches the accompanying fall, from efficient politician to maker of consistently bad decisions.
If "House of Saddam" is meant to remind us that the Iraqi president was a "bad guy," in one of the American president's favorite constructions, job well done. But co-writer, co-director and executive producer Alex Holmes, who spent three years researching the film and who interviewed people who knew Hussein, was clearly after something more. He has the facts. But facts are not drama -- nor are "dramatic scenes," for that matter -- and for all the time it spends on Hussein, the film doesn't communicate a theory of the man inside the monster that feels exciting, revelatory or useful.
It's not a disaster. There are well-written and well-mounted scenes and some good performances (I especially liked Shohreh Aghdashloo as Hussein's first wife, Sajida, and Said Amadis, as her brother Adnan, one of Hussein's trusted advisors until he has him blown up in a helicopter). It is not without suspense. But even at four hours, "House of Saddam" feels incomplete and scattered -- a lessened, not a heightened reality.
The series is best -- or perhaps I just mean that Naor is at his best -- at the beginning, when Hussein is still full of energy, and at the end, when he's hiding from American troops in the countryside -- his "King Lear" phase, in which he becomes, nearly, for a moment, an ordinary man. (He cooks, he fishes, he talks to the neighbor boy.) For much of what passes in between, the president is merely dull and thuggish, occasionally roused to a juvenile charm or a childish rage: Tony Soprano qualities. They grew tiresome on that character as well.
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robert.lloyd@latimes.com
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'House of Saddam'
Where: HBO
When: 9 p.m. Sunday
Rating: TV-MA (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 17)
