and then our exile

Finally got to Fahrenheit 9/11 last night. Popcorn becomes nauseating, and pre-film "music" was much too loud. But the commercials beforehand were dreadfully funny, in a sick sort of way. The thing itself: "yes". i still think [The Corporation] ranks higher simply in terms of coherence and production, but that itself was a true documentary, while this is more of...Communist propaganda? Yes. And it was very nice in that sense. i think he could have focussed on some things further, if only to heighten emotional tension, and on the other hand some parts jarred aesthetic adhesion, but these are quibbles--overall, it brings home the horror and the sheer evil of what a specific cabal's managed to inflict on the rest of the world...: broken, burnt, mangled bodies juxtaposited against laughing children, against George W. lauding big business as his "base"--that these men and women in their opulent, overt disregard for anything i hold dear are so obscene, so mind-numbingly perverted in their perspectives and greed. Some of the underlying patriotism i found uncomforting, but then, i don't hold much by any patriotism, so maybe that's my problem. But: what in the dunya is the point of showing a two-second clip of Afghan elders praying when talking about the Taliban? Or of something from the Hajj when speaking of the Saudi government? Ya'nee, what? Aside from these, criticism stems mainly from his treatment of Afghanistan. You might know in previous years it was Farooq Muntaka & i who became Team Afghanistan at MUNs & the like, addressing auditoriums of high school students on the horror which's been imposed on the country...the film doesn't address anything of that, and in fact somewhat justifies it, oversimplifying. And Moore himself seems to have bought the official line on who the hijackers really were, etc etc, which i find somewhat sad. In the end, though, F911 should be seen, and the dedication won my bleeding heart. Sort of.

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i dream a lot these nights. Interpretations stark, clearcut. "Help me, Lord, in my last cry." --TSEliot, Murder in the Cathedral