One of my closest friends has an older sister who’s been a drug and alcohol abuser for most of her life. Every time she falls off the wagon, her parents pick her up—so she doesn’t have to pick herself up. They can’t make too many demands on her, they reason. She’s weak after all! They’re afraid not to supply her with money, food, and shelter. They fear the guilt that would consume their lives if she died as a result of their kicking her out on the street. The irony, of course, is that their enabling is, in all likelihood, slowly killing her. Guilt is a narcissistic, dangerous thing.
I thought of my friend’s situation as I watched Nina Davenport's documentary “Operation Filmmaker,” which parallels the myopic, gung-ho strategy of “conservative” hawks (that led to the invasion of Iraq) with the myopic, liberal, do-gooder ethos (that led to Liev Schreiber plucking Iraqi film student Muthana Mohmed from Baghdad and dropping him onto the Prague-based film set of his directorial debut Everything Is Illuminated). After seeing Muthana briefly profiled in a segment on MTV, Schreiber immediately offered to hire him as an intern and thought a documentary on the young filmmaker’s experience would prove interesting as well. Hence Davenport and her co-director Kouross Esmaeli (who shot Muthana for MTV, and also got Davenport the gig) are welcomed aboard a soon to be sinking ship.
To read the rest of my dubious review visit The House Next Door.
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