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May 14, 2004

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Control Room: They Report, You Decide
Directed by Jehane Noujaim

Reviewed by Charles Bottomley

Talk about being at the right place at the right time. When Operation Iraqi Freedom broke out last March, Egyptian-born filmmaker Jehane Noujaim headed right to its Qatar-based head. With camera in tow, she gained access to the US Central Command complex and its sometime nemesis, the Arab news agency Al Jazeera.
Blasted as propagandists for Saddam Hussein by Donald Rumsfeld and hated by Arab leaders for their willingness to question their totalitarian policies, the maverick news agency is paradoxically the unofficial voice of the Middle East. For those of us without the benefit of satellite or knowledge of Arabic, Noujaim’s excellent documentary Control Room is a revelation.

The journalists of Al Jazeera’s press room turn out to be as cynical a crew as any of the yellow journalists in the acidic 1929 newspaper comedy The Front Page. Senior producer Sameer Khader explains that Al Jazeera must produce images to counter the United States’ own smokescreen of spin. But, he admits, if Fox News offered him a job, he’d take it. “And the Arab nightmare,” he shrugs, “would become the American dream.”

Burly Sudanese newshound Hassan Ibrahim reserves his skepticism for the PR waffle doled out at CentCom. There reporters jostle for scoops, but have to make do with daily briefings and constant interviews with military publicists. Noujaim’s most intriguing subject is a sincere flack, Lieutenant Josh Rushing, who gradually accepts the notion that there might be more to war than what’s in the press release.
With journalists confined to the CentCom compound, the military keeps a tight control of the war’s narrative. When the press pack sniff out that Baghdad is about to fall, they’re instead fed the inspiring myth of Pvt. Jessica Lynch’s liberation. Al Jazeera’s footage, taken by their embedded cameramen, offers the correctives to the invaders’ gloss: burned baby corpses, POWs terrorized by their Iraqi captors, and the conduct of our boys as they ransack homes and harass citizens.

The Al Jazeera staffers disparage and deconstruct the images they’re fed. Amid the amazement at Hussein’s speedy cave-in, the iconic demolition of his statue in Firdos Square is remorselessly pulled apart. Evidence piles up that the event was staged. Observing the crowds filing into the empty square for the cameras, the chain-smoking Khader notes, “I was born in Iraq … and those men are not Iraqis.”

Noujaim also directed the hit documentary Startup.com, and she’s good at capturing the intimate beat of a workplace. She eavesdrops on an Al Jazeera producer berating his assistant for securing an interview with an American conspiracy nut and an interpreter throwing up his hands in despair at the hot air he has to translate from the English. A former MTV employee, Noujaim has been in the belly of these media giants herself, and knows how these offhand moments humanize the people behind the news.

Caught up in history’s whirlwind and pieced together after the fact, Control Room can sometimes feel a little aimless and equates objectivity with an absence of a guiding thesis. But it feels up-to-the-minute and is undeniably provocative. As the war turns out to be far from over, and the American media starts to wonder how much it led us by the nose into the Iraq charnel house, Control Room is an essential document.

Control Room opens Friday, May 21 at the Film Forum, 209 W Houston Street, between 6th & 7th Avenue.

Charles Bottomley is a freelance journalist