Iraq in Fragments

Just finished watching the film. Artistically it is a revelation. It redefines the genre of documentary. The "non-fiction" world of "reality" is more fiction, in a way, than consciously scripted fiction.

"All of Iraq is divided into three parts". So should say Gen. Julius Petraeus.

Politically, we know Iraq does not exist anymore.

This film is the requiem for the country that was Iraq. From the Iraqi point of view.

There is no narrator. More like the Witness. Voices arise, have their time, and then recede. The Earth, the soil, the elements are given a voice. Silence. A world of oral literacy and culture.

Individuals broach the issue of politics. The viewer sees violence, frivolity, confusion, pain, and suffering. There is no narrator with his top-down central message. No interviewer, no scripts.
The viewer is left having to decide his/her own opinion, if one is even to be held. It is a work of mourning. What is the point of mourning? We mourn to acknowledge death. To put the pieces back together in whatever way we can.

No US point of view--but always hovering (literally in some occasions). When the Iraqis watch TV the screen is always blurred. Bush talks in one scene through a blurred screen. A fitting image. Not everyone in the film is anti-US. [The Kurds in Pt.III are not].

If there is a "message" politically, it is the perception of being a liberator (Pt III Kurds) versus being an occupier (Pts I and II, Sunni and Sadr Shia).

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