With a title like “Taxi to the Dark Side,” one might expect an expos? on a particularly pernicious taxi driver or perhaps something about Senator Palpatine hailing a cab back to the Galactic Republic. However, it’s actually much darker and sicker than either of those, revealing the atrocities committed against detainees in U.S. war prisons and the subsequent political scandal. Director Alex Gibney (“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”) is ruthless and unforgiving as he exposes the “dark side” of American foreign policy and of the human soul itself in his Academy Award-winning documentary, recently released to DVD.
Opening with serene and beautiful shots of the farmlands of Afghanistan, the tone of the film soon shifts as it introduces the story of Dilawar, an average young farmer who fell victim to bad luck and circumstances. Shortly after he decided to start working as a taxi driver, he was detained by the local Afghan militia at a gas station and arrested under bogus suspicions. Two days later he was dead in Bagram, a U.S. detention center; Dilawar died from severe torture including extreme sleep deprivation and repeated strikes to his abdomen and legs.
The details of the case lead to a media explosion in 2005 in the midst of news of similarly vile inhuman atrocities that occurred in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and Abu Ghraib, Iraq. In “Dark Side,” Gibney follows the media and government reactions to the scandal, exploring how conditions for such atrocities came to be and goes on to recount the political underbelly of approved torture and the sick extent to which it expanded. Fraught with interviews of interrogators, detainees, military officials, politicians, lawyers and professors — including one of UW’s very own, history professor Alfred McCoy — “Dark Side” dispels the “fog of ambiguity” covering the disturbing truth underlying the mismanaged detention centers and the executively endorsed carte blanche of wickedness.
Gibney craftily splices the poignant interviews with incriminating and often disturbing photographs, videos, reenactments and text, all to elicit outrage in the viewer because these heinous acts were committed under the awareness and approval of the Bush administration and were “legitimized” by the false pretense of “fighting terror” (despite less than a 10th of the detainees actually being suspected of ties to any terrorist organization). Gibney goes on to establish that the high demand for results by the executive branch in order to cover up their actual failure to capture high-profile terrorists like Bin Laden. These large-scale failures lead to urgent pressure on the detention centers to obtain confessions, regardless of their accuracy, using virtually any means possible. The result was sickening acts of torture and humiliation of people fully known to be “the wrong guys,” in complete disregard to the Geneva Convention policies of due process, which the Bush administration legally redefined as “non-applicable.”
“Dark Side” is incredibly hard to watch — and to stomach — and it safeguards the viewer from nothing as it explores a horrible, complicated issue. Although technically a very well-made film, “Dark Side” is not without flaws. While Gibney is no doubt shrewd and discerning, he doesn’t make for the best narrator. Also, the documentary often feels a bit excessive, straying far from Dilawar and retreading some of its tracks, which, given the unsettling nature of the content, starts to feel a bit tortuous itself. Aside from this slightly blurred focus, Gibney’s work shines as a pyre of truth as it relentlessly sheds light on the U.S. torture policies and the truly “dark side” of our government and military. Most importantly, it gives a name and a face to a wronged man that otherwise would have been swept away and simply forgotten. “Taxi to the Dark Side” is an incredibly heart-wrenching and disheartening film.
4 1/2 stars out of 5.
