By itself, on its own terms, this is amazingly powerful. It's 100% found footage with a few scripted voice-overs. Generally, the observations of the filmmaker are banal, as offensively thin as what we hear from the people documented. But the cinematic composition, the simple exposure to the reality overwhelms all this silliness and becomes pretty profound.
Of course we never see real reality, merely the reality in films of reality. So this is a third generation or four-folded report.
But what it reports is such a powerful story, that it completely reregisters us, and would have when this film was made. But this becomes much more powerful since 9-11.
Its because we have somehow redefined terrorism in terms of Muslim nutjobs and their American Army opponents. This reminds us that terrorism has been with us for some time, and its justification. Moreover, terrorism via airplanes was an entrenched part of the world long before Muwahhidun unimaginatively appropriated it.
The overt foundation of this is that terrorism and art are opposed, that terror steals the story. The making of this film, therefore is a sort of war to wrest it back, along the lines that so-called Christian films about battling the devil are themselves considered part of that battle.
It works, in spite of its own story.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
