A cinematic lamentation for Iraq

BY VERNE GAY | Newsday Staff Writer

October 24, 2006

There are some compelling (or heartbreaking) documentaries on Iraq out there - "Occupation: Dreamland," and "Gunner Palace" are a couple that come to mind - but either the patience of Job or a magnifying glass as big as Manhattan are required to locate them. Tomorrow night, just a TV set will do.

"My Country, My Country" - closing out "P.O.V.'s" 2006 season - comes from New York filmmaker Laura Poitras, who spent eight months in Iraq leading up to the Jan. 30, 2005 legislative elections. She spent many of those months alone, or in the company of U.S. soldiers, Australian security subcontractors, and - most especially - a Sunni named Dr. Riyadh al-Adhadh who ran for election but lost resoundingly (for the simple reason that most Sunnis boycotted the election).

Those, then, are the bare-bones facts of "My Country." But how to describe this film, which briefly hit the indie theatrical circuit last summer? Sorry, but this is where words corrupt, or at least fall short. But let's give it a try: "My Country, My Country" is akin to crawling through the lens of a camera and then plopping helplessly into a world where the pallor of fatalism hangs as thickly as the gray dust over this torn land. To enter is to feel as helpless as the protagonists themselves, but - once you get your soundings - to admire their courage and fundamental humanity as well. It is also to see Iraq as some Iraqis doubtless see their tragic country.

Poitras - a Peabody Award winner along with Linda Goode Bryant for the 2003 film "Flag Wars" - shifts focus and narrative back and forth between occupying forces and Riyadh's family. Her eye is a compassionate one, and never censorious. As portrayed here, the U.S. forces are adrift in an alien world, trying to make sense of the circumstances into which they were thrust and which are beyond their control.

The Iraqis, notably the deeply pessimistic but resolutely idealistic Riyadh himself, are adrift, too. Riyadh valiantly struggles with his fate: His patients are in desperate circumstances, his family hears gunshots and explosions outside their apartment windows, and he knows that his run for office is doomed from the start. Yet he goes forward simply because there are no other options. He belongs, really, in a 19th century Russian novel or a Chekhov play. At "My Country's" conclusion, as the camera follows him walking down some street, he wobbles from side to side ever so slightly. The forlorn image of a lost soul becomes a coda of utter despair.

"My Country, My Country" - much of it in subtitles and supplemented with a truly haunting and often beautiful music score by singer-songwriter Kadhum al-Saher - is a tragedy that everyone should bear witness to.

MY COUNTRY, MY COUNTRY. The story of an Iraqi doctor and his fight for life and dignity. This you must see. Tomorrow at 9 p.m. on WNET/13.