Rendition DVD Review
Another dark side to the war on terror.
Why is it that European and international filmmakers seem to have their fingers more squarely on the pulse of contemporary culture than American ones? Alejandro Gonzales-Inarritu, Alfonso Cuaron, Fernando Meirelles, Paul Greengrass, and now Gavin Hood have all made films in recent years that explore our volatile worldwide political and cultural climate, while the majority of even our most ambitious and celebrated directors turn to remakes, thrill rides or otherwise inward-looking spectacles. Hood's Rendition is merely the latest in this curious trend, but it in a way speaks the loudest about this disparity between the sociopolitical consciousness of our own filmmakers and others around the world.
That said, such commitment to exploring important themes does not necessarily always a masterpiece or even "important" movie make. But Rendition, about the hot-button topic of detainment and torture of prisoners, proves to be a well-executed tale that falls short of completely working only because it refuses to acknowledge the potential ambiguity of its subject matter.
In the film, Omar Metwally (Munich) plays Anwar El-Ibrahimi, a scientist who is apprehended by U.S. authorities while trying to return home to his very pregnant wife Isabella (Reese Witherspoon). Labeled a terrorist suspect, Anwar is transported to a detention facility to be "interrogated"--a euphemism for torture--while Isabella frantically tries to find out what happened to him. Enlisting a college friend and Senator's aide named Alan Smith (Peter Sarsgaard), Isabella tries to retrace his journey, but finds her efforts stymied by Corinne Whitman (Meryl Streep)--a high-level government operative who sees his detainment as necessary to preserving national security.
Meanwhile, a young CIA analyst named Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) finds himself reconsidering his career choice when he is assigned to interrogate Anwar: He soon discovers that the methods used may be far more dangerous than the information he actually elicits by using them.
There's a difficult challenge that filmmakers face when documenting real kinds of tragedies in movies because it's often tough to know how "entertaining" to make those sequences; like the recently-released movie about human trafficking, Trade, there's something unsettling about watching actual horrors portrayed in a fictional film--even if they are depicted in a negative light. As such, Hood elects to show only some of the tortures to which Anwar is subjected, essentially to drive home the pain and awfulness without exploiting it as the film's reason for being. (This is clearly a melodrama, not a snuff film.)
But in a larger sense, Hood's approach glosses over a perhaps unlikely but fascinatingly ambiguous possibility--namely, that torture could actually generate real information that helps eliminate potential attacks. My personal feeling about the effectiveness of these interrogation methods notwithstanding, there is something dramatically compelling about a film that would build sympathy for a suspect and then actually reveal the likelihood that he was in fact guilty. Particularly in light of Freeman's cathartic realization in the film that torture perhaps does not create enough leads to justify its implementation, much less its tangle of moral ambiguities, the point might have been made even more powerful by juxtaposing his disgust for the process with its considerable effectiveness.
Does the health and safety (not to mention civil liberties) of a single individual mean as much as those of hundreds or thousands of others, much less preserving the integrity of a political ideology? These are questions to which I don't know the answer, and hopefully will never face myself. But Rendition is exactly the kind of film that pundits target when they want to accuse Hollywood of a liberal bias. Not only does Hood demonize torture as a method of interrogation, but he humanizes and creates sympathy for the folks who inflict it upon others, first by creating vivid portraits of Freeman and his colleagues and then by following a secondary story about an impressionable boy who more or less inadvertently is manipulated into becoming a terrorist cell.
Mind you, I hold no judgment for this approach, not the least of which because I am personally receptive to the sorts of ideas and themes the director is exploring. But in trying not to vilify any of the characters, and further, by categorically invalidating the possibility that torture can actually get results--even within the confines of a dramatic film--Hood robs his story of some of its relevance. Because the most convincing argument against actual torture is that the information garnered from these sessions is inaccurate, out of date or completely false, thereby rendering the methods an actual obstacle rather than instrument in finding the truth.
The purpose of films like Rendition is to cause reflection within the audience about their expectations and preconceptions, and in fact the greatest accomplishment Hood makes may be to inspire folks to question how they would react if they were in the position of one of the characters. But if this film actually shattered those expectations or called into serious question those preconceptions, then it could qualify as a truly remarkable film; one wonders if it wouldn't be more devastating to walk out of the theater not knowing where you stand on someone torturing or being tortured.
Unfortunately, our current culture seems to value action over discourse, decisiveness over consideration, and simplicity over complicatedness. All of which is essentially why Hood's film is a good one, but not as good as it possibly could have been. It takes a subject that deserves if not demands layers and nuances, and reduces it to something digestible and almost reassuring in its single-mindedness. Far be it from me to suggest that a movie about torture wasn't tough enough, but as far as really exploring the issue thoroughly, Rendition offers a reprieve right when it should really be tightening the screws.
Score: 7 out of 10