Film Review: My Country, My Country

My Country, My Country is just the way I like a documentary to be. Plain, simple and un-intruding yet very well-done and covering an extremely interesting topic--the war in Iraq. The film loosely follows a doctor and his family as he spends time volunteering at a free clinic and chatting with local people and Sunni leaders about their involvement in the upcoming national elections of 2005, an election the Sunni leaders would eventually decide to boycott. With bombs and gunshots exploding while the family attempts to cook a meal or swat a house fly and ultimately live a normal life, we get the eerie sense that this insanely awful and unpredictable life has become normal for these Iraqis. In probably the most touching moment of the film, we are witness to a man in phone negotiations with extremists who have just kidnapped his son for ransom money "in order to fight the occupiers." While on hold, the man mentions to the others in the room that the Americans had been sympathetic of his situation and spread the word around to other checkpoints, which was potentially overheard by the captors, who were not at all happy and left the man with little hope of seeing his son ever again.

With so many dark moments such as this one, you'd think the Iraqi people would be totally hopeless and depressed, and while there are plenty doses of that to go around, they find a way to keep their heads up and get thru the day. When the doctor asks some of his patients who they will be voting for, one mother, with a straight-face says Saddam Hussein, which lets the entire room, including myself watching at home in my comfortable bedroom, have a good laugh. This to me is why My Country, My Country works so well as a documentary. It may not be the most shocking or exploitive documentary around but it gives us a humble and accurate account of what's going on inside Iraq from the regular people who live there and are forced to deal with the situations we have forced upon them from our comfortable bedrooms here in the USA. -Clayton Hauck