revisiting the 9s/film fatales: control room (jehane noujaim, 2004)
Wednesday, June 08, 2022
[This is the eighth in a series that will probably be VERY intermittent, if I remember to post at all. I've long known that while I have given my share of 10-out-of-10 ratings for movies over the years, in almost every case, those movies are fairly old. So I got this idea to go back and revisit movies of relatively recent vintage that I gave a rating of 9, to see if time and perspective convinced me to bump that rating up to 10. Of course, it's always possible I'll drop the rating, but time will tell.]
Apparently I never wrote about Control Room when I first saw it, so this is a chance not only to re-evaluate it but offer a few words, as well. Jehane Noujaim gave us one of the greatest documentaries of recent years, The Square, which began with the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 and was so locked into the moment that, after it won awards at the Sundance Film Festival, Noujaim continued to edit it to reflect more recent events.
Control Room is a cinéma vérité film that documents the work of Al Jazeera covering the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It was filmed by Noujaim and Hani Salama, and offers the best of what cinéma vérité can offer. Of course, there are those who point to the editing process in cinéma vérité films as a way to construct reality while presenting it as unconstructed. In Control Room, there are parallel versions of this. Not only has the film been criticized for being biased, Al Jazeera itself is subject to the same criticisms. But, as one person says in the film, comparing Al Jazeera and mainstream U.S. news media, "This word 'objectivity' is almost a mirage". And Noujaim herself has said of the film, "I am not saying it is the truth, but it is our truth".
One of the more interesting characters in the film is Marine Lieutenant Josh Rushing, a spokesperson for the military in Iraq. Like all people in his position, he offers the kind of spin that his bosses want to hear, but he also comes across as genuinely wanting to understand Al Jazeera and the Arab perspective. Rushing later left the Corps and joined Al Jazeera English.
A second viewing of Control Room didn't convince me I'd underrated a classic, but it's not an insult to say it just misses being as great as The Square.
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