Taxi to the Dark Side

This Oscar-winning documentary is even more devastating than No End in Sight or Bush’s War, because it does not just make the all-too-familiar case for the knee-jerk arrogance and aggressive, willful ignorance of the Bush Administration, but quietly ponders the question, “Are we evil?” It’s a film of great passion but never raises its voice, just makes the case with great lucidity. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to reveal what the final credit roll does, explaining the film as a memorial to director Alex Gibney’s father, a longtime FBI interrogator who was outraged by the idea of sanctioned torture. It documents that the abuses of Abu Ghraib et al. were a matter of policy in the so-called, self-justified “War on Terror,” and not the actions of a “few bad apples.” Or rather, that the few bad apples that turned the whole barrel rotten were Cheney, Rumsfeld, and that bunch. What America needs now is not just change, but exorcism -- we need to drive out the devils, not just those guys, but the demons within that allowed us to ratify the usurpers in 2004, even after they had revealed who they were and what they were doing in our name. Our nation needs contrition and penitence, and re-conversion to our original ideals. America has to come home, though it will be a long way back. The film elicits these thoughts, but does not hammer them home, meditating on the meaning and outcomes of torture. A “Taxi to the Dark Side” is certainly what our country has taken, but Gibney grounds his title in specifics, a young Afghan taxi driver who was rounded up in a sweep and murdered in U.S. custody four days later. The film revolves around remarkable interviews with the principals in the subsequent trials, but spirals outward and upward into the whole edifice of legal evasion and perversion embodied in Gitmo. Gibney eschews the flash that marked his excellent previous effort, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, but is all the more riveting in his intensity of intent. This is must-see witness that is punishing to watch. (2008, Images, n.) *8+* (MC-82.)