Bitter Lake

Bitter Lake did not make it onto TV – not even BBC4; I guess this means that it is so highbrow that even those with free access to BBC4 have the chance to brag about seeking it out on the BBC iplayer rather than watching "public" television. It certainly plays out as something for the discerning viewer – constructed from endless footage, we have a documentary that builds a decades-long narrative around the conflict in the Middle East, and the collapse of our Western leadership, but yet still takes its time to let odd moments play out in silence.

The effect is an engaging one. Visually it is impressive in the variety of the footage and the real oddity thereof. Curtis' intelligent tones go across all of it, and he does build an engaging case as he goes. The style and pacing of the film help hook you so you are very much with him as he talks, as opposed to sitting away looking to be sold. The problem I had was that the film does cover so much ground, and so much complexity, but yet it is very simple in terms of its message and content. The events are absolute and clear as this film would have it – which is ironic considering it is critical of the politicians in the West for making real life so binary.

I did still find it an engaging experience, build with passion and style, but it is an Adam Curtis film and should be watched as such – it is not really a deeply factual and detailed exploration of a subject, so much as it is an experience to be taken on.

'And so the story goes, they wore the clothes to make it seem impossible. The whale of a lie like they hope it was.'

The music of the chameleonic, ambiguous, faded jaded star who fell to earth and sold the world is the key to this film, which challenges the very concept of a documentary.

Is this postmodernism in extremis or a clarion call to revolution? That question is the very point. Curtis presents a very clear and persuasive narrative of world events over, no, within a surreal AND undeniably real meditation that is at once document and dream. It is as true and fabricated and horrific as Apocalypse Now while being somehow less stagey. The footage is real. Most of it. (Although Bowie could be as stagey as any marionette or as sparsely bleak as the shellshocked junkie).

Bitter Lake is a documentary about Afghanistan. And the modern world. The media. Itself. Chameleon, corinthian, and caricature. It is an attempt to be as contemplative as Tarkovsky, as bitterly ironic, and yet it is clear that Curtis is trying to tell not (only) an artistic truth but a historical truth.

The good men of tomorrow, according to the Western forces, turned out not to be what they seemed, buying their positions with heroin and trust. The complexities of Afghanistan's politics and the relation of Afghanistan to world politics, these are not just tackled by Bitter Lake, they are evoked. Is the lake beyond comprehension or can we come to terms with it and ourselves? Bitter Lake is never as glib as that question. You could say it was postmodern and experimental, but it seems too well constructed, or perhaps dreamed, to dissolve into a sea of perspectives. Perhaps it is something new. A myriad that reassembles itself into a guided missile. It certainly feels vital, important, but from these shores the eventual impact is... far off. I might just slip away.

Powerful and at times brutal documentary that lays bare the history behind the current day situation in Afghanistan - from Roosevelt and the Saudi's, the Russians and the Muhajideen, the British and the international arms trade, the global banking system to Bin Laden and of course the Taliban - what an utter mess of failed diplomacy, vested interests, corruption, religion, fanatical idealism, terror and varied international 'meddling' on a grand scale leading to many decades of political instability and human tragedy.

There's no good versus evil here, because other than the Afghan people no one comes out of this with any merit.

I like Adam Curtis - he is a strong force for good in this world and he usually offers a much needed balance to the usual party and partisan line. He makes the kind of films that Michael Moore would surely like to make if he didn't need the money so much. Bitter Lake attempts to explain the complex situation in Afghanistan and the history behind the UK and US failed military objectives and recent withdrawals. It is a long film and it is not told in a linear fashion. It's a sonic and visual roller coaster ride - so you had better commit time to it. Don't watch it if you are tired or seeking some benign background amusement. A few people have mentioned about the scene with the soldier and the bird. I think that they perhaps missed the irony and the juxtaposition of it. There were many other scenes that were there doing the same job. Bitter Lake is an important film because it enlightened me as to how the British Army, The Red Army and the US Army and many other Western Powers and Organisations have failed in all of their efforts to tame this wild and archaic land with their hardy, courageous, stubborn and proud people.

People are immobilised mentally by gratefully clinging to the more glorious story of our attempts to rid the world of evil, to the extent that, as a result, they are no longer able to construct a sensible equation between what is being achieved and the suffering of others. We have become like the Germans were, over which we scoffed and carped and declared our moral superiority for decades, offering, as they did, nothing but adulation for the glorious troops and dismissing the treacherous thought that evil was being done. This is an important historical document confronts us under the pure rules of reason with an intervention by the British Crown in Helmand which was both a terrible and an act of profound evil because despite being told in no uncertain terms that they were about to attack a host of innocent people trying to resist the corrupt local government, we dropped bombs on them thereby turning appalling injustice into a catastrophe for the innocent by an act of supreme evil. The great point illustrated here, which no-one is really picking up, is that the mainstream news never told the country about this possibility, only of our honour and bravery and sacrifice in pursuing the Taliban, which turns out to be dishonest and unbalanced reporting, acting for the state, not the honour of the Press and Media. We can from these brave revelations that if something is not done then Big Brother and The Ministry of Truth will have got its way and vanquished our national sense of fair play and humanity. It is deeply worrying to our democracy and the plurality required of the Mass media that the BBC has prevented this programme from general release and that it will soon be lost to us because DVD's are not possible as things stand and it will be removed from its only source, iPlayer, worryingly for free speech the film has already been stopped on YouTube, what does that say? Adam Curtis has tried everything here to get through our complacency and to awaken us to what is really happening, and it is time that we told our leaders that they must stop and that an independent Judicial Enquiry over which the Government and Crown have no control be undertaken to root out those who commit these awful crimes in our names whilst skulking behind doors of secrecy. It shows that our democracy is a fraud as no-one would have wanted any of this in their name.