Sunday, March 2, 2008
Schroeder's Fog of Verges
I am trying to find a word for the experience of being both simultaneously fascinated and unsettled because that is my response to Barbet Schroeder's documentary, Terror's Advocate. The subject is Jacques Verges, a lawyer who has represented terrorists and those charged with crimes against humanity for fifty years. "I'd even represent George Bush, if he pleaded guilty."
One acquires a kind of emotional memory when exposed to more unique films. The emotion I had here with Terror's Advocate is much like I had during Errol Morris and his film on Robert McNamara, The Fog of War. The familiar feelings similar are due, I believe because both filmmakers had an exclusive, a scoop with lengthy interviews with significant historical figures. In Fog of War, there was a sense that this was about as confessional and intimate as we could expect this controversial figure to be. It had the framework of the "eleven lessons" to keep things from becoming too unwieldy.
Schroeder's film on Verges does become a bit unwieldy and its subject more evasive than McNamara. There is so much here, it should probably have been a mini series instead. And unlike Fog of War, Terror's Advocate devotes a quarter to a third of its screen time to interviews with associates, historians, etc. which help to expand and balance the obvious spin and evasiveness that Verges puts on his life and work.
It focuses in on three major aspects of his life. First, is the Algerian revolution and the trials associated with it. He defended and later married Djamila Bouhired, one of the cafe bombers in Algiers immortalized in the Pontecorvo film and later a political martyr, thanks to Verges' publicity campaign. A second portion of the film deals with Verges' disappearance during most of the seventies and speculation associated with it: Was he in deep with the Khmer Rogue with his school pal Pol Pot? Was he associating with Waddi Haddad and other founders of the Palestinian movement? Or the Nazis associated with Palestinian movement ? Or just trying to avoid being killed Congolese for his association with Patrice Lumumba's alledged assasins? What kind of life has this guy led?
The third part of the film continues to illustrate his defense and association with the Carlos the Jackal, Iranian terrorists, and others til it rolls to a halt after nearly two and half hours. The latter third of the film does seem to get bogged down by a new variety of talking heads expanding and countering Verges' account of things.
A Buffet premise is that non-fiction film can have a special impact to make a viewer think and see differently about the world. Schroeder and Verges have done just that. It would be intriguing to view Terror's Advocate or hear feedback from someone who lived in Europe during part of Verges' career. I can't think of an American counterpart in the courts who was so ubiquitous with such a long and significant period of history--F. Lee Bailey, William Kunstler?
posted by well-executed buffet at 5:49 PM
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