Anyone interested in international affairs generally, and the criminal behaviour of some western governments in particular, ought to go and see the new American film Rendition, now on general release.
Nearly a year ago I wrote in this blog about the American practice of Extraordinary Rendition, the polite name for the CIA habit of kidnapping foreigners (including British citizens), usually in countries other than the US, and clandestinely flying them, blindfolded and shackled, to countries where torture is routinely practised and where the victim can be more, um, forcefully interrogated than would be prudent within the jurisdiction of the US courts — all this on the mere suspicion, sometimes later revealed to have been unfounded, of involvement with terrorism. The whole thing is exhaustively chronicled and analysed, and the damning evidence set out, in the indispensable book Ghost Plane by the man who has done more than anyone else to expose this gruesome activity, Stephen Grey. And it's made much more unpalatable still by the cogent evidence, some of it from leaked documents, that our own (British) government has knowingly connived at it.
Now comes the first film on the subject, appropriately entitled Rendition. It's directed by the South African-born Gavin Hood and stars the always dependable Meryl Streep, here in a chilling role as the head CIA renditioner, with Reese Witherspoon, Jake Gyllenhaal (one of the gay shepherds in the seriously overrated Brokeback Mountain), and several equally excellent actors of middle eastern extraction. 'Anwar', the victim of rendition in the film, is an amalgam of real-life rendition victims, many of whose experiences are described in detail in Stephen Grey's book, so the main plot is disturbingly realistic. The country in which the film's victim is interrogated under torture (and even the details of the torture used are well documented) is identified only as being in North Africa, but parts of the film were shot in Morocco and a document briefly shown mentions Tunisia: however, we can take it that the location at least is fictitious.
There's no need to write a full review of the film here: the Los Angeles Times, among many others, carried a very good one just three days ago when Rendition opened
in the States, and I recommend it. But British reviewers have in some
cases been surprisingly lukewarm, on grounds that seem to me mistaken. Peter Bradshaw, usually a perceptive and reliable critic, was grudging in his praise for the movie in the Guardian, but concluded on a harshly negative note:
But infuriatingly, the movie fudges
the most important issue, with a fundamental flaw that goes to the
heart of the matter: the question of whether the CIA's phone-record
evidence against Anwar is sound or not. If it's all just a mistake,
then how can such a mistake be made? The question is not satisfactorily
answered, and the sleight-of-hand intended to distract you from this
fact simply fails to work.
But surely this ambiguity, far from being a 'fundamental flaw', itself
'goes to the heart of the matter': in so many of the cases of
extraordinary rendition by the CIA, we have no way of knowing whether
the CIA's 'evidence' against the terrorist 'suspect' is sound or not.
That evidence is virtually never tested in an impartial court of law,
and the intense suffering and disruption of life inflicted on the
victim may well be unjustified even on the most cynical and
self-serving interpretations of the international law against torture.
We want to believe that Anwar, the rendition victim in the movie, is
wholly innocent: but we can never be one hundred per cent sure. And
that's more true to life than the definite acquittal for which Mr
Bradshaw seems to hanker, an essentially more sentimental hankering
than the film or real life can usually satisfy.
The reviewers in last Friday's Newsnight Review
(BBC 2 television) were similarly lukewarm, complaining that the
sub-plot, which concerns the lives and relationships of the Arab
families and associates of the principal local interrogator acting on
behalf of the CIA, was unrealistically 'melodramatic'. I must avoid a
spoiler here, which might detract from the enjoyment of the film by
those who haven't yet seen it, so it's enough to explain that the
sub-plot describes the complex events surrounding a suicide bombing,
its organisers and perpetrator and their relations with its main
intended victim; and all this is ingeniously tied in with the main plot
(the rendition) by a surprise twist that to my mind comes off
brilliantly. To complain that such events are 'too melodramatic' is
surely to complain that people in the real world whose lives are
wrecked, one way or another, by terrorism are themselves involved in
too much melodrama. The complaint seems to reflect a certain
squeamishness about recognising unpleasantness. The film, by contrast,
faces the unpleasantness with unflinching realism. It's not always easy
to watch, but it needs to be seen.
Stop Press: First prize for the worst and most extraordinary British review goes to today's (London) Sunday Times . 'CL' (presumably Cosmo Landesman — indeed the Sunday Times website confirms his authorship) complains that Rendition
...is too loaded against the practice of rendition to make it interesting
which is a bit like saying that a murder story is too heavily loaded
against murder to make it exciting. Comment is surely superfluous.
"Maintain your rage," Gough Whitlam told the crowd outside the
Australian parliament building in Canberra immediately after being
unconstitutionally deposed as Australian Labor Party prime minister by
a scheming Governor-General in 1975. Half at least of the Australian
people complied, maintaining their rage until the Governor-General went
into exile — and beyond. Watching Rendition,
the movie, is a good way to maintain your rage against this ugly
excrescence on the international scene. And it's a first-class movie,
too.
Tailpiece: J. and I saw the film at a free preview for which
tickets were provided to those responding to a newspaper advertisement.
The preview was at the Empire Leicester Square
in London, where the floor of the auditorium is so inadequately raked
that it was impossible for most of the audience to see over the heads
of the people in front, restricting the view to the area of the screen
between heads, and involving the need for constant swaying from side to
side in the attempt to see round them. Since much of the dialogue of Rendition is
in Arabic with long English subtitles, and the screen, in the current
fashion, is about a quarter of a mile wide, it was physically
impossible to read all the subtitles, which certainly served to
intensify the suspense by limiting one's comprehension of what was
going on. But as we hadn't paid to see the film, we could hardly
complain. We went on afterwards to a well-known restaurant in London's
Chinatown, just behind the cinema, where at the end of our meal I was
constrained to tell the head waiter, in what I hope was a moderate and
amicable tone, that while the food had been terrible, the service had
been worse. (He laughed, I hope with embarrassment.) It was indeed the
worst Chinese food that we have ever encountered in many decades of
eating Chinese in, probably, a score of different countries. Still, the
film was well worth seeing. Please don't miss it. But if you eat
Chinese afterwards, it's prudent to stick to a restaurant that's in the
current Good Food Guide.
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