>>REVIEW
WHY WE FIGHT
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY Eugene Jarecki
Opens Friday, June 2
Uptown Screen
Enough time has passed since the horrible events of 9/11 that Hollywood has started bringing it to the screen. United 93 looked at the people aboard one of the ill-fated planes used in the terrorist attacks, and later this summer, Oliver Stone offers up World Trade Center, which tells the story of police officers trapped in the rubble of the Twin Towers.
Regardless of whether you think these films are in poor taste or not, the fact remains that they are looking at the effects of 9/11, not the cause. That story proves to be considerably larger in scope than most filmmakers can handle. Look at Fahrenheit 9/11 – Michael Moore is no stranger to big-picture exposés, but even he had trouble getting a handle on such a sprawling subject.
That’s why it’s a surprise that writer-director Eugene Jarecki’s latest documentary, Why We Fight, is so successful. In less than 100 minutes, he is able to tackle more than 50 years of American military history and put the events of 9/11 in perspective.
With the help of pundits, military spokespeople, former Pentagon employees, government officials and people on the street, Jarecki traces the events of 9/11 all the way back to the end of the Second World War. President Harry Truman was all too willing to use nuclear technology to end the conflict. Later, President Lyndon B. Johnson was unwilling to pull out of Vietnam. By the time the former Soviet Union collapsed, the United States had become so powerful that terms like imperialism had become an understatement. And that, as Jarecki shows, was only the beginning.
Why We Fight is an infinitely more complex documentary than Jarecki’s last effort, the critically acclaimed Capturing the Friedmans, but it is also more fully realized. Jarecki deftly cuts talking head interviews with a wealth of stock footage, yet rarely does he editorialize. While Moore was the star of Fahrenheit 9/11, Jarecki keeps the focus on the issue, never resorting to sensational tactics to make a point. That understated approach goes a long way to making Why We Fight a convincing argument rather than a series of sound bites.
Jarecki does a fine job of personalizing the issue. In trying to explore the titular question he talks to a retired New York cop whose son died in the World Trade Center, the two pilots who were involved in the first military strike of the second Persian Gulf War and another man so disenfranchised that he feels his only option is to join the military. All the interview subjects are unapologetic in their beliefs, even though some of them don’t know what to believe. When Jarecki takes to the streets to ask people point blank, "Why do we fight?" the answers are not surprisingly inconsistent and confused.
Why We Fight isn’t objective, but few good documentaries are. The scope of the film is so huge that it raises just as many questions as it proposes, but Jarecki makes it clear that until we get true answers from those in charge of the U.S. military industrial complex, these are questions we have to keep asking. |
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