Movie: "the Kingdom" OT.

Well, what's your perspective?

I found it entertaining and somewhat enlightening. The ending was fairly moving, but there were a lot of holes in the story as well.

 

It's a very typical approach of american cinema through american culture. I'm not only refering here to Vietnam war and the films that portrayed the war, its outcomes on the average joe in drama (deer hunter is still one of my favs) or in comedy, but overall the perception that american culture has of wars and american engagement abroad and in conflicts (which increasingly grew since the First Gulf War) and which peaked with the Intervention (Invasion, or Liberation, call it whatever you wanna) in Iraq, this perception was always transcript to movies. It's Hollywood.
There is a very important focus today on the Middle East not only because of the war in Iraq but also because the region is unstable. As always, probably the best movies about war and occupation in Iraq will come in 5 to 10 years, still the focus on the Middle East is so strong, many films related to this region and american position in it tend to appear. It feeds the culture by reflecting on screen what the culture believes into. Sometimes it also helps to understand how things really work here. Which is not that bad, i believe, because the average american still believes there is a close link between Al Qaeda and Iran. Now about the movie itself, Syriana was a good movie. This is just a blockbuster.

 

Not from the Middle East but a practising Muslim. The Kingdom is just another entertaining movie and I quite like Jennifer Garner..
Seriously though, by far, the most 'logical' mid-eastern scenario 'terror' movie is as pointed by Pav...Clooney's 'Syriana' which maybe because of the 'true-ish' nature of the story makes a bit more sense and is a balanced movie on the whole.

 

It's been a few weeks since I saw The Kingdom, but I recall the movie seemed to have a dual mode: the unrealistic, too-slick, fast-moving Hollywood faire, and then the Middle Eastern perspective. One reviewer wrote that the Israeli actor (an Arab, I think), who played the Saudi cop, was really the star of the movie.

Re Syriana: As someone who has been a fan of Robert Baer's two non-fiction books, I bought a copy of "Syriana" (in which Baer is not only the basis of the movie but also has a cameo). I have had to watch it several times to sort it. He also has made a documentary called "Cult of the Suicide Bomber," which is insightful although slightly amateurish in its production. I noticed that when the Farsi or Arabic being spoken really needs careful translation, a translator speaks, whereas Baer holds his own in casual conversation. I still don't know where Baer is coming from, though. As a former CIA case officer, he's used to not revealing much. One thing he said in a PBS interview is that, in order to understand Iran, Americans "need to see the world through Iranian eyes." I thought that was pretty enlightened, but Americans have become so dominated by fearful thinking that few have the capacity to appreciate his point.

If one relies on film to help sort out what's going on, it's essential to go outside the Hollywood entertainment-worldview of America and the world. For example, I thought a movie called "No Man's Land" about the Balkan conflict was good. "Time of Favor" is an Israeli movie that I thought was unusual and good for showing the conflicts that one IDF officer felt.

I've become something of a documentary junkie. I strongly recommend the 2001, Oscar-nominated "Promises," which starts out slow but becomes a very moving story, and the DVD rental has updates to the relations between the Palestinian and Israeli youths featured in the documentary. I also liked "The Inner Tour," about Palestinians who can see Israel only by taking a bus tour of Israel. To illustrate my sense of insulation from the Middle East, "The Inner Tour" was the first time in my life I read (in subtitles) a Muslim prayer. It's not the prayer that was striking but the fact that, after hearing in many movies the call to prayer, I had never actually read or heard a translation of a Muslim prayer. This bothered me.

Also, the non-politcal documentary "War Phographer" was eerie and drove home a sad point (in my interpretation): we do not really want to know--and don't much care--about what's going on in the world.

Back to "The Kingdom:" I think that a viewer needs to be careful about not confusing entertainment with reality and to be aware that get a wrong impression from misleading entertainment is worse than having no impression. I am looking forward to the new documentary "Real Bad Arabs," which describes the entertainment industry's tenedency to villify Arabs.

I just finished watching "The War Tapes," in which three Army national guardsmen took video cameras to Iraq for their tour. Like one Fchatter who went to Iraq said here, he is not ready to talk about his experience of Iraq but let it suffice to say, "It was really bad."

I have a long list of documentaries I might post, from explanations of how Vietnam became a disaster, to the role of oil, to religious cults, to the dangerous drift America has had toward wars of aggression while the public is reletlessly encourage to be afraid, very afraid.

We have far more to learn than we dare admit.

David