Taxi to the Dark Side not exactly a Star Wars reference

Alex Gibney’s Taxi to the Dark Side is a documentary about the U.S. Government’s abhorrent maltreatment of detained suspected terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the infamous Guantanamo Bay. Featuring disturbing interviews and appalling images of torture, “Taxi” is not for the weak of heart. The documentary begins with the investigation of the tragic incarceration and murder of a young Afghani taxi driver named Dilawar at the hands of U.S. interrogators at the Bagram Air Force Base Afghanistan. Gibney uses this investigation and a series of extremely well-chosen interviews with soldiers involved in this and other incidents at Abu Gahrib and Guantanamo Bay to open the can of worms that is what the U.S. Military’s information division has become since 9/11. As the candid interviews with these interrogators become more and more shocking, it becomes dreadfully apparent that these pleasant-seeming American soldiers were, through the orders of their superiors and the ambiguity of their situation, led collectively down a path of logic frighteningly similar to the Holocaust Nazi. A British detainee offered a particularly disquieting interview, relating, in eloquent Pakistani accent, how he was abducted from his home, shackled, beaten and tortured for years without trial or even access to a lawyer. Unsurprisingly, Gibney’s investigation finds itself climbing the chain of command until it ends at the wrinkled visages of Bush and Cheney. As the documentary unfolds, it becomes truly horrifying to realize how words like “information” and “control” can be used to mask purely insidious intentions, and how easily evil can manifest and justify itself in the twisted rhetoric of official documents and memos.
However, even a documentary this powerful isn’t without issues. Time and again it couples outrageous photos and video clips with the mournful wailings of middle-eastern vocalists. Ironically, the documentary protests the use of sensory deprivation and assault in torture while it oftentimes seeks nothing more than to deprive the viewer of every sense other than empathy. While Gibney offers a reasonably fair amount of interviews of those for and against the techniques of torture used in Bagram and the like, the documentary is nowhere near unbiased. Interposing video clips of Bush and Donald Rumsfeld with shocking soundbytes and zooming-in shots of photographed documents while deep bells chime eerily in the background does little to prove the documentary objective.
Still, keeping his film unbiased was hardly Gibney’s prime objective. Gibney set out to make a documentary that would send a vehement anti-torture message, and did so masterfully. His research was impeccable, his imagery was brutally effective, and his presentation was superb. In the light of President Barack Obama’s recent order to shut down the very Guantanamo Bay investigated in this documentary, “Taxi” is extremely relevant. It is important to see this movie to understand why the standards set by the Geneva convention after World War II are so important. It is important to see this film to be informed about these atrocities, and to understand why and how they happened. For, as long as the American public has the ability to investigate and reveal the evils of power, corruption and hatred, we will remain a free nation.