Jim Devine wrote:
My impression was that the movie's lack of any substantive references to what the war was about or who it was against was central to its point. All of these people were totally obsessed with themselves and their petty competitions, so that even the Rumsfeldian leader of the war camp never mentions the enemy. It's a version of the "banality of evil."
It is just unreal, however. How do you describe the white-hot intensity of briefing rooms in pre-war situation without a single proper noun ever being articulated. Like "Iraq" or "Syria" or "Iran" or "uranium" or "Saddam". Okay, if you want a fictionalized deal, then do what the Marx brothers did and call the country Freedonia or something. Without a grounding in some kind of concrete situation, even fictionalized, it turns into nothing but a comedy of manners--in other words, typical BBC and PBS fare. Except with profanity.
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