The Fall of Fujimori

"The Fall of Fujimori" is a very interesting documentary about a guy most folks here in the US know little about--though they should. Think about it....the child of Japanese immigrants to Peru becomes the president! And, for a time, he seemed like a great guy--someone who was actually able to eliminate most of the terrorism that had rocked the nation and restored the economy. During a 10 year period, one group, the Shining Path, killed an estimated 35,000 people! But, the bad news--to eliminate this threat he pretty much ignored human rights. In other words, to fight brutal people, he became more brutal. But he also had visions of becoming president for life--and, in the end, this led to his downfall. However, the film really doesn't quite get the whole picture since it was made in 2005. Since then, MUCH more has happened--including the man's arrest and trial for human rights abuses! Overall, the film seems like a reasonably fair depiction of the man--neither showing a far right or left bent in discussing the man. In addition, it helps that they show Fujimori himself and his family discussing him--though including an interview with his estranged ex-wife would have been very interesting if they could have included it. Well worth seeing.

A friend and I went to see this movie. We have opposite opinions about Fujimori but after watching this movie we agree on the following: the easiest way to have an inaccurate documentary is to make it about a foreign country in which you were not present when the events happened, no matter how talented or how much you invest in the film. If you are truly looking to learn about another countries history, watch something made by natives of that country otherwise you won't be able step away from your bubble. And those who try to force their views and opinions about something to which they don't belong are really abusing their power. To make it even worse, the director chose to not talk about the embarrassing involvement of the CIA with Fujimori's regime. She decides to evade dealing with the only subject for witch her country has much to explain to Peruvians. But this is not surprising because, both, the director and the CIA are violating the sovereignty of Peru by trying to affect the democratic processes at very different levels of course.

If the director was really interested in helping Peru she would have financed a native to make the documentary. In any case there are numerous Peruvian made documentaries, films and books about the subject. Such include "Ojos Que No Ven", "Dias de Santiago", "Montesinos-Fujimori: Las Dos Caras de la Misma Moneda", "Montesinos: Poderoso Caballero", etc. The director of the "Fall of Fujimori" should spend her time analyzing the numerous problems in her own country or at least the involvement of her country in the matters of other nations.

This film was riveting and informative. It announces the arrival of a very talented director, Ellen Perry. She practices the fine art of "access" journalism with the assurance of a master, and she has told a very important story in a very disturbing and exciting way.

The film combines so many levels of accomplishment that the effect is dizzying. Not only did she obviously get the scoop of a long personal interview with the exiled leader who has refused to talk to anyone else, but she gets him to answer and the discuss the hard "questions" of his tenure; his response to terrorism, the suspension of democratic institutions and principles, the use of criminal and paralegal entities to support the State. And she weaves these revelations into a very slickly produced, explosive package. She got the scoop; she did the research; she masters the story, and the medium.

Fujimori is a high practitioner of postmodern politics, as the movie reveals through interleaved interviews and gobsmacking historical videography by some of the most talented and brave of videographers. Just that video, edited to tell a long story concisely, would be the best meditation on postmodern politics I have seen. When these scenes are combined with Fujimori talking or trying to talk about his tenure, the effect is at turns disturbing, enlightening, touching, and telling. From the shots of the dark night of the auto-coup to Fujimori riding his bicycle through Lima on a post Martial Law landslide election victory tour through streets full of the people, to Montesinos et al.; what struck this viewer was how close, and how unexotic, how contemporary Peru really is.

The movie focuses, wisely on telling Fujimori's story and on letting the gaps in his answers and in the story speak for themselves. All the information in this movie is officially accurate, by the way, but the film in no way attempts to impart a mountain of information, nor should it. It succeeds as a film precisely as it is spectacular, and in the way that it reveals gaps in the spectacle. The placid face of Fujimori or his daughter constantly smiling are juxtaposed against terrible acts and terrible decisions. You are left pondering both the legacy and the power and effectiveness of Fujimori. Populist or demagogue; selfless statesmen or wily tyrant? At one point in the film, Fujimori meta-comments on his spectacular use of a caged Guzman in stripes, in another he meta-comments on his "hostage crisis" and its brutal and successful resolution as a video plays next to him. The film introduces little gaps and meta-commentary to uncanny effect; the no-nonsense objective demeanor of the technocratic manager's manager comes off as sheer unreality (Fujimori is better than the best of actors). How does he do it? To acknowledge his effectiveness is not to promote him.

This is history as it is happening now. Fujimori emerges as the paradigmatic politician of our day; his instinctive populism is as genuine as the terrors behind the placid facade are real. He is a model for what George Bush wishes he could be; he is both a more skilled and more genuine leader and he had greater power to institute authoritarian policy; exercise authority he did, and most frightening of all, the people loved him for it. None of that is justification for authoritarianism, and that is the subtle point of a movie that is cautionary. Patriotism is no justification for tyranny; patriotism is a love for one's country and no justification for criminal acts. Charisma is no justification for authoritarianism either; it is a skill, a talent, and a fascination. Beware the skilled populist.

Access journalism must balance a commitment to tell the story from the perspective of the sources with an equal commitment to objective history. Perry does an excellent job. Draw your own conclusions.

I was looking for a documentary of the same journalistic quality as Frontline or "Fog of War" (by Errol Morris). Instead I was appalled by this shallow and naive account of a very complex and disturbing man and his regime: Alberto Fujimori. This movie should be called "The return of Fujimori". The director presumes she made a "perfect" movie because alienates both pro and anti-Fujimori factions when in fact it is a very biased and unprofessional piece of work.

The movie has few crucial facts wrong:

1) She uses the so called "landslide" election of 1995 in which Fujimori was re-elected with 65% of the vote, as an example of the massive popular support of Fujimori. But we all now know to be the fruit of a very organized electoral fraud.

2) The movie states that Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) killed 60,000 people. In fact, the Truth Commission's final report states that there were 69,280 deaths due to political violence in Peru. 33% of those were caused by SL. That leaves the other 67% in the hands of the police, military and other groups. The fact that she uses the same misleading information that Fujimori has been using for 10 years it is another example of how terrible this movie is.

For any person with some education on Peruvian politics and history, Fujimori is clearly a consummated manipulator, a delusional character and remorseless egomaniac. His regime was very far from being democratic. He is still a menace to Peruvians. Despite these facts the director lets Fujimori tell the story. Not only on how he wants the camera to be positioned but the narrative and direction of the film seem to be part of his political agenda. He always seems to have the last word. There are no journalistic "cojones", just soft questions and unchallenged remarks. Where is Oriana Fallaci when we need her? The director, when questioned after the screening, didn't hide the fact that she was deeply impressed by Fujimori, his charm and intelligence. Yes, she has been definitely charmed by him, and you can tell by looking at this film. It's obvious she has a very hard time to digest the multitude of facts that point towards his responsibility on the corruption, murder and deception that took place. She assured the gasping audience that Fujimori was really a "patriot" when few moments earlier, one of the leading Peruvian journalists was very adamant in telling us that Fujimori was, above all, a "traitor". She went on to say that despite all the accusations not "a single dollar" was found on any bank account on his name, etc, etc. It was like hearing again the same gang of ruthless thugs that ruled the country for 10 years defending their master. It was a sad moment for journalism.

This film makes injustice to history. It is an insult to hundreds of dead people, disappeared or unjustly incarcerated by Fujimori's regime. No wonder she later confessed that all the Peruvian intellectuals she befriended while making the movie felt betrayed by it. Unbiased? The words "oportunistic", "naïve" and "denial" come to my mind instead.

First, let me say the sheer amount of the footage and the editing are astounding. Often historical documentaries rely mainly on their voice-over narration, and linger a long time over their relatively few visuals. Not here. Here the visuals change quite rapidly - you might even be tempted to reach for your "freeze frame" once in a while. And here the variety and depth of the visuals are almost dizzying. Archival and new footage are inter-cut seamlessly. There are so many snippets of archival footage I started to feel sorry for the person whose job it was to obtain the "rights", then eventually realized that task would have been just plain impossible and there must have been some confluence of events that put most of these snippets in the public domain.

I particularly appreciated the portrayal of Fujimori as an ambiguous figure who did some great things. Knowing now of the human rights abuses and the corruption during his administration, it's too easy to pigeonhole him as just an "evil monster". But the film makes us face the fact this all-black portrayal is too cut-and-dried -- this was some kind of gray, and although most would now judge that the high cost wasn't worth the benefit, that's still somewhat debatable. U.S. presidents too have been known to do things that were motivated mostly by politics (for example check out Bill Clinton's "wag the dog" episode) -- how is that different from the kind of "corruption" the film shows Fujimori engaging in? Just how many shades of gray are there really?

This is a sort of "narrative newsreel", telling a story from beginning to end over more than a decade, rather than restricting itself to just breaking news. All the key events are at least mentioned. To those expert in the field, I suspect the film will seem comically simplified. For the rest of us though, the story and events will initially be mostly unfamiliar, and we'll get seriously educated. Because the time span is so long and individual events covered so briefly, a person with no background at all will probably need to watch this two or three times (at least once listening to the director's commentary on the DVD) and read at least the Wikipedia entry on Alberto Fujimori.

But, what was astounding at the time seems just a few years later to not be very relevant. The whole narrative arc of the film was constructed as a "cautionary tale" to the U.S. about how over-zealous pursuit of "terrorists" can lead to great societal evils. Fujimori is presented as a person whose goal was to suppress some serious terrorism, but who made questionable Faustian bargains to do it and wound up being hounded out of office.

That "cautionary tale" is _not_ what I was looking for though (in fact it's possible I would have been disappointed even back in 2005:-). I wanted especially to "understand" Fujimori, and that's not what I got. Here's what I was looking for:

To understand the man, start with a brief description of his parents and his childhood. (In fairness, the film does mention birth date and place. But it sheds no light on any possible psychological effects.) Also, describe some of the psychological impacts in his impressionable late teens and early 20's. The film lets stand unchallenged the idea Fujimori was formerly "just a professor", and also both shows us and tells us that he was both a polished and sensitive politician and a skilled administrator and political infighter. (Given the director's hint about how many coup attempts Fujimori survived, he must have been highly skilled just to stay in office.) If he really was "just a professor", where did this skill come from?

Then tell us something of the context of Peru. Is it really true, as Fujimori claims, that what went on in Peru in his administration was "more democratic" than in any other Latin American country? (Maybe the line between "democracy" and "populism" is less clear than we like to think.) What's the racial composition of Peru: what proportion of Asians? are the "native" and "Spanish" peoples thoroughly mixed, or still rather separate? is the urban/rural divide in Peru typical of Latin America? Why is Peruvian politics so volatile, with disgraced politicians being freshly elected only a few years later? How have previous Peruvian leaders behaved, and why were so many of them "strong" leaders? A few hints in the film suggest the urban/rural and elite/peasant divide is extremely wide, so much so it's hard to understand how the country can be governed at all - what's the real truth?

Also, tell us how Peru related to the international power politics of the time. There are tantalizing hints of connections to the U.S. CIA and to the drug wars in Colombia. The U.S. foisted its "he's an S.O.B, but he's _our_ S.O.B" attitude on the world quite a bit previously. But by Fujimori's time the Berlin Wall had fallen and the superpower struggle seemed to be over. Was Peru a victim of the hangover of older U.S. international attitudes?

Finally, try to parse Fujimori's personality while in power. His wife went from being quite happy with their marriage to divorcing him in just a few years. Why? He apparently had some serious detractors even back then. Can we hear from them?

There are hints not only Vladimiro Montesinos (Fujimori's "Rasputin") but Fujimori himself siphoned off millions of dollars into offshore accounts. And there are hints Fujimori engaged in some seriously corrupt acts _before_ his war on terrorism. Neither hint is at all consistent with the narrative arc about the over-zealous pursuit of "terrorists". Seemingly something deeper motivated Fujimori - what was it?