Hollywood commentary on US political culture, courtesy of the silver screen, is nothing new. From as far back as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington featuring Jimmy Stewart, to Joe Klein’s Primary Colors (a send-up of former President Bill Clinton’s first run for the US presidency), the political happenings in Washington D.C. have served as fresh fodder for the Hollywood grist mill.

But this year’s knuckle-baring battle for the White House between President George W. Bush and Democratic Senator John Kerry, has paved the way for a new crop of movies going the route of the documentary genre. It’s no longer about entertainment, or even infotainment.

The name of the game is persuasion—a deliberate means of influencing voters and shaping public opinion about the candidates and the issues at hand. Some documentaries do so by tackling the truth, telling it with a fairly even hand, while some go for the throat. It all adds up to a good time at the movies, documentary-style.

Here, IslamOnline.net offers a summary of several politically and issue-minded documentaries gracing the big screens and hitting the video store. Of course, there’s more out there about Bush than about Kerry. Some of these films were reviewed by IOL in the past and some are new for us. But be warned: View them with a grain of salt, because in these films, objectivity is a mythical beast—now you see it: now you don’t.

Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11

Remember this elephant? It stomped into US theatres last July to huge audiences, resulting in a weekend rise to the top box office position (a feat not achieved by a documentary in nearly 50 years.) Coming from its victory at the Cannes Film Festival in France, the film rode a huge pre-release hype (smoothly manoeuvred by Moore’s machinations) that garnered interest in the public, entertainment, and political arenas.

The film was a sprawling behemoth, tackling President George “Dubya” Bush’s inept (according to Moore ) pre- and post-9/11 presidency and with the hint of a comic witch hunt. It investigated the ties between the Bush and Bin Laden families, the false, bumbling war on Iraq (instead of going full throttle after the real target, al-Qaeda) and the spin-war played on a duped American public by fanning the fear of terror attacks.

Though the material presented in the film was previously explored in other books and documentaries, Moore’s unique touch showed a chilling, provocative take-on-all-things Bush. Is it all truthful? Well, Moore swears by his facts. But three months later, the movie that swore to swing voters away from Bush has deflated a great deal. And now it seems the presidential debates may be the real swing vote.

Fahrenheit 9/11 is now available on DVD.

Michael Paradies Shoob and Joseph Mealey’s Bush’s Brain

This film is not as much about the US President, as it is about his political guru Karl Rove. It’s a pejorative portrait of a cunning, clever, cut-throat man, who will move hell and high water to push the career of his candidate—and his own career—to the next level.

Based on the bestselling book Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential, the movie follows Rove from his youthful days as a young Republican hothead, to his molding of a newbie candidate nicknamed “Dubya” from a Texas governor to the president of the United States.

It’s a real, unflattering portrait of the presidential advisor, with substantiated accusations that Rove worked from First Lady Hillary Clinton’s office in 2000 to push the Bush and the Republican agenda. The film also argues that Rove was behind the outing of CIA undercover agent Valerie Plame after her diplomat husband Joseph Wilson wrote a report refuting the Bush administration’s claims of weapons of mass destruction in Niger.

The film received the usual amount of criticism for being a one-sided attack on Rove. Of course Shoob and Mealey argued that Rove refused repeated attempts to appear on camera for interviews. It’s obvious that the filmmakers aren’t happy with Bush’s presidency or the way Rove has pulled the marionette strings. But again, their case is often weakened by over-indulgent tirades against the war in Iraq. Still, it makes for a scathing, riveting piece of work.

Bush’s Brain is still showing in some independent theaters across the country and is available on DVD.

George Butler’s Going Upriver

The film is based on the bestselling book “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove made George W. Bush Presidential”

Here’s your typical “what makes a man” movie. This feature-length documentary explores the life of presidential hopeful, Senator John Kerry, and what drives his personal and political personalities. It is loosely based on Douglas Brinkley’s book Tour of Duty, and starts with a look at Kerry’s personal letters and journals from his tour in Vietnam. The war veteran came home only to protest against the war to the Nixon administration.

Interestingly, as Kerry rose in the anti-war movement, President Richard Nixon and his boys sought to discredit his leadership, only to give up after finding nothing, according to the Watergate tapes. Following an unsuccessful bid for the US Congress in 1972, Kerry made it to the US Senate in 1984, and toiled away for 20 years before fighting to become the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004.

Butler has a unique insight into Kerry’s psyche, as he began following and photographing the young soldier and rising political star in 1969. Kerry’s opposing roles as a Vietnam veteran and anti-Vietnam activist serve as the underpinning for a larger study on the sixties generation, now coming into its own political mindset.

Of course, this film seeks to paint a stately, heartwarming portrait of the presidential hopeful and put to bed the accusations of the Swift Boat Veterans Group. You’ll not find a muck-raking look at Kerry’s life in this film. But it does offer that historical perspective on what drives Kerry’s political ambitions and why he feels the way he does about war.

Going Upriver is playing in theatres across the U.S. and also is available on DVD.

Jehane Noujaim’s Control Room

When Control Room had its US premiere in New York at the New Films/New Directors film series in April, the early excitement foretold a whirlwind to come. The documentary zeroed in on the Arab news channel Al Jazeera and its coverage of the US war in Iraq. But out of a focus on the Arab coverage of war, was born a complex and thrilling dissection of war coverage by Western and Eastern media.

This film is not about Bush or Kerry; this film is about the media and the war in Iraq, specifically, how public opinion is shaped by what the media shows and what the military chooses to disclose. American viewers came to learn that Al Jazeera’s news coverage was, perhaps, not the “propaganda” US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld angrily claimed it to be.

The film strongly makes the case that news is what is important to a target audience. For US viewers, broadcast channels like CNN and NBC showed embedded journalists, glorified soldiers, hard-fought victories, and Iraqi people thankful to their American saviors. But in the Arab world, Al Jazeera focused on the loss of lives, the toll the war took on Iraq, and the mistakes made by the US military.

Was the decision to go to war the right one? This question isn’t tackled as much as which side is objective in its coverage of the war. Is objectivity in journalism possible? What is true in journalism? Control Room tackles all these questions with smartly juxtaposed interviews with Al Jazeera producers and correspondents, and journalists from CNN and NBC.

Control Room is showing in a limited number of theaters across the country.

Robert Greenwald’s Uncovered: The War on Iraq

And finally, here is a movie devoted solely to President Bush’s determination—by hook or by crook—to wage a war on Saddam Hussein for “freedom” in Iraq. Through a series of revealing interviews with intelligence officials, Foreign Service officers, UN weapons inspectors, and a former CIA director, Uncovered strives to prove that the reasons for going to war were, at best, misleading.

Bit by bit, piece by piece, the foreign policy heavyweights tear apart Bush’s well publicized reasons for going to war in Iraq. It skirts the route of humor and probing investigations to present interview after interview, calmly and methodically dissecting every reason offered for why the Bush administration believes Iraq is dangerous and must be democratized

Time Magazine called it a “sober and devastating critique of Bush’s foreign policy.” So why, with these kind of quotes, is this film not receiving the same caliber of attention as Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11? Not everyone is the master of hype, and hype is where it’s at. Still, if you want to go by the comments of the average "Joe" on the Internet, this, of all those focusing on Bush’s war in Iraq, is the film to see.

Uncovered: The War on Iraq will be available on DVD on October 19.

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Related Links

• Film Review: Fahrenheit 9/11 Goes for the Jugular

• Control Room Documentary: Behind the Cameras of Al Jazeera