The Power of Nightmares

UNIVERSAL REMOTE

The Cannes Film Festival just announced the films eligible for this year's top prize but the most interesting may be one playing out of competition. It is Adam Curtis' The Power of Nightmares. It is a British-made three hour documentary about how the disparate threads of Radical Conservatism and Islamic Fundamentalism have been woven together and will undoubtably be the dominant world issue for at least the next decade. Basically, his argument is that these two sides use their hatred of each other to consolidate their own power and eliminate dissent within the ranks.

This is no Fahrenheit 911. Curtis' work is not a populist rabble-rouser like Michael Moore's (in)famous film. It is a sober indictment of how Fundamentalists of all stripes have taken the wheel and are leading all of us down a dark and winding road. The great Jeffrey Wells' Hollywood Elsewhere has a more comprehensive breakdown of the film's themes and I encourage you to read it. In the meantime, here's a sampling:

(Nightmares) says, in other words, that Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz have a lot in common with Osama bin Laden. It also says that the mythology of "Al-Qaeda" was whipped up by the Bushies, that the term wasn't even used by bin Laden until the Americans more or less coined it, and that the idea of bin Laden running a disciplined and coordinated terrorist network is a myth.

There is no release date set for Nightmares to open in the States yet but it is inevitable. I propose a Daily411 field trip to the Film Forum for the premiere.