No End in Sight

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For the This Is Menace album, see No end in sight (album).
No End In Sight

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Charles Ferguson
Produced by Charles Ferguson
Jennie Amias
Audrey Marrs
Jessie Vogelson
Alex Gibney (executive producer)
Starring Campbell Scott
Music by David Weiss Duduk
Editing by Chad Beck
Cindy Lee
Distributed by Magnolia Pictures
Release date(s) 2007-07-27
Running time 102 minutes
Country USA
Language English
Official website
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

No End In Sight is a 2007 documentary film about the American occupation of Iraq. The film marks the directorial debut of political scientist and former software entrepreneur Charles H. Ferguson. The film premiered January 22, 2007 at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. The film opened in limited release in the United States on July 27, 2007, playing in 2 theaters. As of December 2007, the film had grossed $1.4 million, and had been released on DVD.[1]

Contents

[edit] Synopsis

No End in Sight is a documentary film that focuses on serious mistakes made by the Bush administration in the two year period following the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The film portrays these errors as the cause of ensuing problems in Iraq, such as the rise of the insurgency, a lack of security and basic utilities for many Iraqis, sectarian violence and, at one point, the risk of complete civil war.

To a large extent the film consists of interviews with the people who were involved in the initial Iraqi occupation authority and the ORHA (the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, later replaced by the CPA, the Coalition Provisional Authority). Thirty-five people are interviewed, many of them former Bush loyalists who have since become disillusioned by what they experienced at the time. In particular, many of those interviewed claim that the inexperience of the core members of the Bush administration — and their refusal to seek, acknowledge or accept input from more experienced outsiders — was at the root of the disastrous occupation effort.

Among those interviewed are

According to No End in Sight, there were three especially grave mistakes made by L. Paul Bremer, the head of the CPA:

  • A move toward "De-Ba'athification" in the early stages of the occupation. Saddam Hussein's ruling Ba'ath Party counted as its members a huge majority of Iraq's governmental employees, including educational officials and some teachers. By order of the CPA, these skilled and often apolitical individuals were banned from holding any positions in Iraq's new government.
  • Not providing enough troops to maintain order. The looting of Iraqi museums, containing priceless artifacts from some of the earliest human civilizations sent chilling signals to the average Iraqi, telling them that the American forces did not intend to maintain law and order. With no police force or national army to maintain order, buildings were destroyed to harvest the raw materials contained within them. Desks, tables, chairs, and computers from buildings were being stolen or destroyed. The infrastructure that existed prior to the US invasion was ruined. In addition, huge arms depots were available for pillaging by anyone who wanted weapons and explosives.
  • The disbanding of the Iraqi Army, against the advice of the US military, which made 500,000 young men with weapons and training unemployed and bitter. Many of them decided that their best chance for a future, many with extended families to support, was to join or, together with the rest of their unit, become a militia force. These trained Iraqis were better informed than the American soldiers as to the location of Iraqi military stockpiles, and these now unemployed soldiers made use of this knowledge. Improvised explosive devices (IEDS), once contained within the stockpiles, started being planted in various locations around Iraq, killing Iraqi and American soldiers, as well as innocent civilians.

The film cites these three mistakes as the primary causes of the rapid deterioration of occupied Iraq into chaos. An additional factor was the failure of the Bush administration to establish martial law in Iraq after the country was conquered.

[edit] Reception

As of March 13, 2008 on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 94% of critics gave the film positive reviews based on 84 reviews (79 "fresh", 5 "rotten").[2] On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 89 out of 100, based on 27 reviews.[3]

A. O. Scott of The New York Times called it "exacting, enraging" and said "[Charles Ferguson] presents familiar material with impressive concision and impact, offering a clear, temperate and devastating account of high-level arrogance and incompetence." Scott said "most of the movie deals with a period of a few months in the spring and summer of 2003, when a series of decisions were made that did much to determine the terrible course of subsequent events" and wrote "the knowledge and expertise of military, diplomatic and technical professionals was overridden by the ideological certainty of political loyalists." Scott also remarked, "It might be argued that since Mr. Bremer, Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Wolfowitz declined to appear in the film, Mr. Ferguson was able to present only one side of the story. But the accumulated professional standing of the people he did interview, and their calm, detailed insistence on the facts, makes such an objection implausible." Scott concluded, "It’s a sober, revelatory and absolutely vital film."[4]

Rob Nelson of the Village Voice said "Masterfully edited and cumulatively walloping, Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight turns the well-known details of our monstrously bungled Iraq war into an enraging, apocalyptic litany of fuck-ups." Nelson said the film "is certainly a film about failure, perhaps the ultimate film about failure. Or maybe a film about the ultimate failure?", also writing that the film "is less a work of investigation (or activism) than history." Rob Nelson wrote, "Focusing on the war itself, Ferguson is chiefly interested in compiling a filmed dossier of incompetence—not so much to argue that the war could have been won and won early, but to suggest that the magnitude of arrogant irresponsibility will carry aftershocks as far into the future as the mind can imagine." Nelson also said, "Ferguson's approach is at once relentless and, with the help of Campbell Scott's flat narration, chillingly calm and composed." Nelson wrote, "The evidence speaks for itself, and No End in Sight—addressed to those who'll be swayed against the war by ineptitude more than immorality—is the rare American documentary that doesn't appear to preach to the converted, or at least not only to the converted", also saying "For those of us who've opposed the war for years, the movie is at once intensely frightening and, it must be admitted, disturbingly reassuring."[5] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 4 stars and said "This is not a documentary filled with anti-war activists or sitting ducks for Michael Moore. Most of the people in the film were important to the Bush administration." Ebert concluded, "No, I am distinctly not comparing anyone to Hitler, but I cannot help being reminded of the stories of him in his Berlin bunker, moving nonexistent troops on a map, and issuing orders to dead generals."[6]

New York Post critic Kyle Smith, one of the three critics who rated the film negatively according to Rotten Tomatoes, gave the film 2 1/2 stars out of 4 and said "Some documentaries are a fervent search for truth; others are a fervent search for snickers. This one is the latter, providing via interviews and old film clips a Greatest Hits for Bush haters."[7]

At the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, No End in Sight won the Special Jury Prize for Documentaries.[8]

On January 22, 2008, No End in Sight was named by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as one of 5 films nominated for a prize in the "Best Documentary Feature" category.[9]

Time magazine's Richard Corliss named the film one of the Top 10 Movies of 2007, ranking it at #7. Corliss praised the film, saying it "stands out for its comprehensive take on how we got there, why we can't get out", and opined that everyone should see it, calling it "the perfect stocking-stuffer for holiday enlightenment."[10][11]

No End in Sight received the following awards in the 2007 film season:[12]

  • National Society of Film Critics Award: Best Non-Fiction Film
  • New York Film Critics Circle Awards: Best Non-Fiction Film
  • Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards: Best Documentary/Non-Fiction Film
  • San Francisco Film Critics Circle: Best Documentary
  • Florida Film Critics Circle Awards: Best Documentary
  • Southeastern Film Critics Association Awards: Best Documentary
  • Toronto Film Critics Association Awards: Best Documentary

[edit] Top ten lists

The film appeared on many critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2007.[13]

[edit] Book version

A book version of No End in Sight is available from Publisher: Public Affairs books.[14] The first book of its kind to chronicle the reasons behind Iraq's descent into guerilla war, warlord rule, criminality and anarchy, No End In Sight is a shocking story of wholesale incompetence, recklessness and venality. Culled from over 200 hours of footage collected for the film, the book provides a candid and alarming retelling of the events following the fall of Baghdad in 2003 by high ranking officials, Iraqi civilians, American soldiers, and prominent analysts. Together, these voices reveal the principal errors of U.S. policy that largely created the insurgency and chaos that engulf Iraq today--and what we could and should do about them now. 640 pages.

[edit] Interviews

[edit] References

  1. ^ Kilday, Gregg. "Iraq documentary generates book and Oscar hopes", Reuters, 2008-01-04. Retrieved on 2008-01-31. 
  2. ^ No End in Sight - Rotten Tomatoes. Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved on 2007-10-13.
  3. ^ No End in Sight (2007): Reviews. Metacritic. Retrieved on 2008-03-13.
  4. ^ A.O. Scott (2007-07-27). In the Beginning: Focusing on the Iraq War Enablers. The New York Times. Retrieved on 2007-09-12.
  5. ^ Rob Nelson (2007-07-24). Surge This. Village Voice. Retrieved on 2007-09-12.
  6. ^ Roger Ebert (2007-08-10). :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews :: No End in Sight. Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved on 2007-09-12.
  7. ^ Kyle Smith (2007-07-27). END CAN'T JUSTIFY SCENES. New York Post. Retrieved on 2007-09-12.
  8. ^ 2007 Sundance Film Festival award winners. The Salt Lake Tribune (2007-01-28). Retrieved on 2007-01-28.
  9. ^ 80th Annual Academy Awards Nominees. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (2008-01-22). Retrieved on 2008-01-22.
  10. ^ Corliss, Richard; “The 10 Best Movies”; Time magazine; December 24, 2007; Page 40.
  11. ^ Corliss, Richard; “The 10 Best Movies”; time.com
  12. ^ No End in Sight (2007) - Awards
  13. ^ Metacritic: 2007 Film Critic Top Ten Lists. Metacritic. Retrieved on 2008-01-05.
  14. ^ Amazon.com: No End in Sight: Iraq's Descent into Chaos: Charles Ferguson: Books

[edit] See also

[edit] External links