James Longley's beautiful, affecting, and urgent document of a war-torn country – conveyed intimately through a trio of personal stories – observes quite literally Iraq in Fragments. BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM picks up the pieces.


IT’S A SAD state of affairs when people start complaining about “fatigue” over the Iraq War coverage. What makes it even sadder is that you’re probably going to get a better understanding of the conflict through this 90-minute documentary than you would from the entire New Zealand media coverage of the last few years. But that’s not this documentary’s fault, which is certainly one to watch to have some idea of the complexity of Iraq. The United States does not stand a chance.

The documentary looks at three fragments in Iraq through three stories. The first involves a Sunni child who works in a café and claims his boss is nice because he doesn’t beat him. Instead we see the boss subject the child to extreme verbal bullying, yet also trying to help him get an education. This first story is overwhelmingly poignant as the child dreams about being a pilot but fails the first grade four years in a row.

The second story looks at a Shiite commander and features some astonishing footage (how on earth did an American get access to prisoner beatings and potent anti-Western speeches – you only have to admire the director’s courage). This part of the story despite its stunning work is a little overlong – a lot of the cogent political points were made early on in that piece.

The third story is of a Kurdish farmer and his family. This is at times much lighter in tone, which works really well. However, there are more political points being convincingly made in this section too. The documentary’s success lies in allowing Iraqis and not foreigners to comment on their own situation.

The film is also beautiful to look at. The documentary could easily have been filmed in a vérité-style to match the tone of the piece. Instead, director James Longley goes for a saturated, poetic and artistic style. Unlike the typical long-takes you’d aspect, Longley films Iraq indeed in fragments. The documentary aims to show the beauty of Iraq – an aestheticisation of its people, cities and country.

The lack of external narration allows the characters to speak for themselves. Although this is made up of individual testimony, these stories manage to grasp at the sheer complexity of the situation in the country. After watching this film it would be easy to say Iraq should be split in three, but then again, it’d be easier to not try and get an understanding of a country that has had these divides imposed on them already.