Country:
USA
Recognizable Faces:
Naomi Wolf
Josh Wolf
Directed By:
Ricki Stern
Anne Sundberg
You can't consider The End Of America to be a documentary. It's more like an audio-visual essay, a document of opinion more than an actual effort to present an objective truth. It's too bad, because the movie really means well. It's a comparative study of the Bush regime and the National Socialist years in Germany. There are eerie parallels indeed, but the filmmakers put Naomi Wolf on such a pedestal that they manage to flush almost all of her credibility down the drain. The movie is based on the book she wrote called The End Of America, it's narrated through her conference and doesn't offer much perspective on the problem or even a soapbox for the republican to defend themselves (or dig their own grave). You see where this is going.
I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theory nut job, but there are indeed common traits in between the Nazis and the Bush regime. I'm not pulling the trigger and calling them dictators, but the evidence is there. Evidence which Wolf exposes in a (bit simplistic) ten steps program to dictatorship. The most terrifying of Naomi Wolf's points were #3: Develop a paramilitary force not answerable to citizens, Nazis created the SS, and Bush regime started hiring Blackwater with no-bid contracts and both engaged in #6: Engage in arbitrary detention and release. Perfectly fine American citizens were imprisoned for "suspicion of terrorism" during hurricane Katherina, and that for months. And I'm not even getting to the Maher Arar case here, a man who got his life ruined for no valid reason. But somehow the point that stuck with me the most was #8: Control The Press, where Wolf exposes the stories of Dick Cheney calling the New York Times traitors for exposing the stupidity of their wiretapping activities, saying that they endangered national security. Young journalist Josh Wolf was also jailed for eight months for an act of freedom of speech.
Naomi Wolf makes some interesting points. I'm not a hundred percent sold to her arguments, mostly because I couldn't measure its strength, due to some aesthetic choices made by the directors. The best way to present your argument is to gauge its superiority over the ones of your opponents, but the only thing Naomi Wolf has to measure herself against here is archive footage. Some of it is convincing, but it can only go so far. Nonetheless I had chills down my spine when the movie showed Blackwater president Eric Prince being interrogated for hiring Chilean war criminals and only answering: "This man has a right to freedom of contract" for defense. Henry Rollins said it best: "If you love freedom so much, stand in front of it to defend it, don't hide behind it like a coward" . This movie bears the burden of proof, because it's preaching to the choir and sticks disturbingly in its comfort zone. I couldn't help feeling bad for Naomi Wolf for being portrayed in such a strange, distorted light.
Nonetheless, The End Of America still manages to convey some important enough ideas to spark debate. It will require the viewer to think outside what's been offered to him and do his own research, but it's a very good "half of argument". That's what's so sad about it. I'm sure Naomi Wolf could nail down some Republican to the floor without the help of overly cautious filmmakers that don't want to think beyond what they know, whether it's valid or not. That also brings up the need for conflicting ideas in a healthy society. Whether it's the Republicans censoring their detractors or leftist filmmakers that only film one end of the debate, you're losing a lot of steam and you start sounding like a propagandist. If you have any interest in politics and the fate of the world (and you should), you should give a try to The End Of America, with your critical goggles on. Because it's not a documentary.
SCORE: 71%
