Taxi to the Dark Side- a documentary review

A piece of art so rarely ingrains itself in one’s mind to the point where you find yourself thinking about it when you are awake and when you are asleep. After viewing Alex Gibney’s documentary “Taxi to the Dark Side” at University of San Francisco’s Human Rights Film Festival, I had vivid dreams for two days in a row that referenced the devastating and disturbing images of detainees at Bagram, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo Bay prisons, as detailed in Gibney’s film. As the clichéd phrase goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words…” As most clichés go, this one very much rings true in the case of “Taxi to the Dark Side.”
The film’s title refers to the story of an Afghani man named Dilawar, a taxi driver from a small town who is stopped, arrested, and eventually taken to Bagram prison for suspected terrorists and those with ties to Al-Qaida or the Taliban. However, though the film goes into depth about Dilawar and his situation, it is clear that he is just the focal point used to tell the story of many other Arab persons who experienced harsh and often life-threatening forms of treatment when imprisoned in these and other detainment centers. Gibney used footage of interviews with Dilawar’s co-workers and family members, as well as showing his home and where he worked. This is extremely effective in humanizing Dilawar and causing the viewer to connect to him from the get-go, instead of causing one to feel like “something happened to that guy over there,” and now it is over, so who cares? This is not to discount an audience’s ability to associate with who or what they are seeing onscreen. However, frankly, it is sometimes the case that presenting someone of a different culture, ethnicity or circumstance makes us forget that they—whoever “they” are—are also human beings, just like us. Showing Dilawar’s former, daily life is a hook, albeit a terrible and sad one, for the rest of the film.
Gibney lays the foundation of his film by simply yet cleverly combining footage from interviews he personally conducts, and archived footage of government officials. Clips of Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and others from past press conferences and interviews are interposed between Gibney’s footage. In this way, the filmmaker is letting members of the Bush administration “speak for themselves.” Most often, they seem to be speaking against themselves. This is a smart technique, since what these higher-ups said at a given time is recorded and cannot be contested, and goes hand in hand with one of the many points that Gibney is trying to make—people in power abused that power, and lesser people, both prisoners and soldiers, suffered because of it.
Of course, the film is arranged in such a way as to highlight the major fumbles and contradictions of those in power at the time. There are tidbits, like the percentage of detainees found to actually have terrorist ties (apparently a very low number, below 5%), and information, now seemingly incredulous, is presented through the mouths of government “talking heads.” It is simply not conceivable to want “Taxi” to be more fair and balanced; to say so would be missing the point of the documentary. Gibney himself brings the perspective of a liberal American who was shocked and completely dismayed by the happenings at these prisons, and wanted to bring it to light for other citizens of the U.S. and of the world. However, whether or not a person identifies himself as a conservative or liberal, or as a supporter of the Bush White House or not, to see the pictures taken of the tortured prisoners strikes a very human chord—horror—an emotion that has no political or social implications.
The images are indeed some of the most troubling and disturbing that I have ever viewed; I found it very difficult to watch, turning away and looking down at my notebook at several points throughout the viewing. By the middle of the film, I felt nauseated. Seeing the pictures without explanation would have this effect, but might cause one to not go beyond what he or she was seeing. However, giving context for these pictures and digging deeper into the events surrounding these images is what brought them to reality. Even Gibney, in a post-viewing Q&A session, described the toughest task for creating this documentary as having to look at the images of tortured men on a day to day basis. Several techniques are employed throughout the documentary, such as the use of filming reenactments of torturous events in the prisons, filmed in black and white, and ominous, melancholy background music. In my opinion, the most saavy and impressive feature of “Taxi to the Dark Side” was the interviewing of military interrogators who were sentenced to jail time for their actions in the detainment centers. By doing so, Gibney is not avoiding these people, the supposed perpetrators of torture, but directly hearing from them as members of the military, subordinates in the military, and as human beings. His interviewing of these people also reveals that Gibney does not believe that the men and women who tortured prisoners are completely at fault for their actions. While he does not seem to take the blame totally off them, his attention on their unique perspective does not incriminate the interrogators either. Rather, it makes a comment on how easily one can become just one small part of a bigger issue that grows exponentially out of everyone’s control.
Gibney won the Best Documentary Oscar for “Taxi” this year, and while I am certainly no connoisseur of documentaries, I believe that this one was definitely deserving of official recognition. I highly recommend seeing “Taxi to the Dark Side,” and keeping an open mind about its content, regardless of opinions and thoughts you may have concerning the United States government’s handlings of the war on terrorism.