Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...

”It is nowhere written that the American Empire goes on forever.”

It’s a provocative ad line for a film for many reasons. First of all, America has always denied being an empire-building nation, all evidence to the contrary. Secondly, there’s a sort of imperviousness that we as Americans imagine about ourselves. Of course America’s going to go on forever... right? Aren’t we?

Eugene Jarecki, director of the fascinating THE TRIALS OF HENRY KISSINGER, won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance with this film, but I’m not sure what someone would get from this film at feature-length that they wouldn’t also get from a brief description of its main thesis. It’s not even a particularly innovative idea. The film states that we fight because we have become a machine designed to profit most when we are fighting. The lynchpin that holds the entire film together is the famous footage of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation, in which he warns of the rising influence of the military-industrial complex. When he coined that term and first used it, I’m sure people must have thought he was exaggerating or that he was overstating the case. Today, his most dire prediction has become simple fact, and one need look no further than our own White House to prove that. No matter what your feelings are about George W. Bush or Dick Cheney, it is impossible to deny that Cheney’s vice-presidency has erased all lines between the proper and the improper in terms of military contracts. We elected a defense contractor, and one could argue that we got exactly what we asked for as a result.

If the paragraph above made your blood boil, then chances are you’ll huff and puff and yell and scream as you watch this one at home. We live in a new age of political documentaries, though, which all seem to be designed to reinforce beliefs the audience already holds. One of the reasons I detested the experience of sitting through FAHRENHEIT 9/11 so much was because of the almost-suffocating wave of smugness coming from the entirely self-satisfied audience that I saw it with. Personally, I go to see films for the full range of experiences... not just to have my own worldview confirmed, and not just to see things that will make me feel good. With the new wave of political documentaries, I think we’re getting an accurate reflection of just how broken the political discourse in our country is, and the result is a fairly unpleasant situation for anyone trying to review these films as films, and not as political diatribes.

For what it’s worth, I think Eisenhower’s comments were prophetic. Watching what has unfolded in the years since, whether it be the nuclear build-up during the Cold War or the various shenanigans of the ‘90s and the new century, we live in the world he described, and I don’t see how we dismantle what’s been built at this point. I wish this film had gone further with its thesis and examined exactly what we are going to hand down to our children, what sort of wars we’re already planning for in the future, and just what we’re supposed to do about all the money that bloodshed generates, no matter how noble a cause may be. There’s only one part of this film that affected me, and it involves the father of a young man killed in the WTC attacks. He’s justifiably outraged and furious in the wake of the events, and when Bush orders troops into Iraq, this guy couldn’t be happier. He even manages to get in touch with some of the men who are responsible for the bombs being dropped, and he gets them to paint his son’s name on one of the bombs. Pretty great and emotional stuff, but the twist comes when the guy loses faith in the reasons we went into Iraq, and when he feels like he was lied to and manipulated. All of a sudden, that gesture he made isn’t just an act of karmic payback. Now it’s a case of creating even more problems and solving nothing, and the guilt hits the guy on-camera in a fairly profound way. In these scenes, Jarecki puts a human face on what is otherwise a well-assembled but dry lecture that repeats itself too many times to be as effective as it wants to be.

There are extra scenes, appearances by the filmmaker on THE DAILY SHOW and CHARLIE ROSE, an audience Q&A after a screening, and a filmmaker commentary on the disc, so there are definitely extras to dig into if the film really rings your bell. The film is largely assembled from found footage and archival stuff, so it looks about as good as it possibly can.

MOVIE: Rent it

DISC CONTENT: Good

DISC QUALITY: Good