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Herald rating: * * *
In John Pilger we have a messenger who is often louder than the message. His 55th documentary is a useful compendium of the United States' shameful destabilisation of Latin American politics over two generations. But it fancies itself as much more than that.
Many excellent films have already explored the territory, from Nicaragua: No Pasaran and Chile: Hasta Cuando, the 1984 and 1986 films of Pilger's compatriot David Bradbury, to Patricio Guzman's fantastic 70s trilogy The Battle of Chile and somehow more sobering Obstinate Memory which confronted the national forgetting in 1997. Yet not one of these predecessors is acknowledged in Pilger's film. It is as if he invented documentary analysis of US foreign policy in Latin America.
In truth, there is little new in The War on Democracy: some of it (the "duck and cover" drills for American kids living in the nuclear shadow) is so old it is cobwebbed. Henry Kissinger's orchestration of the 1973 coup in Chile has been written about for 20 years and on the Congressional record since 1998.
As always with Pilger, the provenance of the footage can be maddeningly unclear. Howard Hunt, for example, a former CIA agent and Watergate burglar, appears twice as a talking head. The footage is plainly culled from different interviews - neither, evidently, conducted by Pilger. The sense persists that Pilger is as unconscionable a manipulator as the US spin doctors he targets.
What is new is an exclusive and deferential interview with Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, a socialist whose 1999 election began a sea change in Latin American politics. Pilger passes up the chance to ask even interesting questions, much less tough ones (about the suspension of parliament, perhaps, or the closing of opposition newspapers) in favour of a distinctly dewy-eyed approach. It is not even plain to me that it is particularly useful to get aristocrats on camera dismissing Amnesty International as "the propaganda mill", although it delivers a frisson of satisfaction to those of us who agree with each other.
It's a comprehensive summary, but a far from interesting film.
Directors: Christopher Martin, John Pilger
Running time: 96 mins
Rating: M (violence)
Screening: Academy
Verdict: Comprehensive though hardly groundbreaking summary of the US's covert and overt interventions in Latin American politics over 50 years.
