No End In Sight

I went into this documentary fairly open-minded about the things it would present to me concerning the Iraq War on Terror and the Bush administration. But I can honestly say that after watching this documentary, the only thing I really understood was that the war could've been handled better financially and internationally and that Bush made some awful decisions with his administration. I didn't get specifics nor did I really understand a lot of the jargin tossed here and there.

There are documentaries that spell things out for people, and then there are documentaries that assume you're already fairly educated in the topic and will understand what's going on without a basic course in what they're talking about. This documentary, I felt, was at the latter of the two. I really, REALLY wanted to understand what they were talking about but found myself really struggling. It doesn't help that I'm terrible at politics and find myself mostly bored. And it also didn't help that the documentary was about 75% talking heads and 25% B-roll/stock footage of the military shooting weapons, looking haggard, and of other random footage concerning politics and war. Talking head documentaries can be terribly fascinating, but I am so sad to say that I wasn't really into it at all.

The things that stood out to me, though, were when it mentioned that they tried to get specific members of the Bush administration to comment, and they were "unavailable", which worked more in favor for the documentary than it did hurt it. When I see someone not comment on something in a documentary and they make note, it stands out to me as they were either too high and mighty to talk or they didn't want to accidentally get caught saying things that would incriminate themselves or something of that sort. I also remember the amazing lingering shots that they had where you'd see their expressions at the very beginning of the film, expressing the seriousness of the situation they were about to discuss, and then at the very end, sealing the deal and their argument that, yes, the Bush administration could've easily handled things better and could've done things differently.

Overall, the documentary was very well made and pieced together, I just lacked the attention or interest to be fully invested and I wish it had more to it than talking heads and B-roll. You political people out there, go ahead and watch it! Those of you who are like me, maybe you should watch something that spells out politics so simply that George Washington would face-palm himself, and I have no shame in needing those kinds of documentaries, but I will strive to improve myself and try and understand. Maybe one day, I'll try watching it again with a "The Bush Administration/Iraq War for Dummies" book in front of me.

Someday.