“The Forever Prisoner” (2021)
Alex Gibney with yet more ugly truths from the Evil Empire.
Alex Gibney with yet more ugly truths from the Evil Empire.
“AZ will never be placed in a situation where he has any significant contact with others.
And should remain incommunicado for the remainder of his life”.
“AZ” is Abu Zubaydah and due to the USA Government and its barbaric actions since that horrific morning of September 11th, 2001, this one man, this one human being, has indeed been placed in several situations, “black sites” if you will, in Thailand, Poland, Lithuania and Morocco and with any significant contact being hooded prison guards or a single interrogator and until arguably this documentary and the intensive work of his two legal representatives, incommunicado and very definitely it seems, he’ll remain in his final destination of the horrendous Guantanamo Bay prison site for the remainder of his natural life and having not a single legal charge levied against him.
Where this documentary excels and arguably follows in the footsteps of Alex Gibney’s previous astounding documentaries is in the dark shades of grey in any documented real life story. I’ve avidly followed the career of Gibney since his 2005 documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and have seen every documentary film he’s released since. Whether it’s the Government backed scoundrels of Enron, the crazy life of my literary hero Hunter S Thompson, a somewhat scathing indictment of the church of Scientology or a very bright light shone upon the lives of Julian Assange, Lance Armstrong or Steve Jobs, I’ve always been immediately invested in a Gibney documentary due to the life he paints behind the life we believe we already know. That might sound trite or self obvious, the story behind the story if you will, but Gibney’s documentaries have a brilliant habit of bringing these stories, these hence far unknown stories, to the surface where they can breathe, provide tangents that lead to a link, and links that become obvious chains.
The Forever Prisoner is arguably a follow on or at least a stablemate to his brilliant 2007 documentary Taxi to the Dark Side and again here, the horrifying details are all in the shades of grey. Is Abu Zubaydah really “independent” (his written and translated words) with no affiliation to either Al Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden, or the videotaped ultra dedicated fanatic to the cause and third in their terrorist structure? Why has he not been charged? Where is the trial of his peers? Where are his human rights and why haven’t they been applied? Surprisingly, the key word “rendition” isn’t used throughout the documentary, however that throws a light upon a separate set of questions: why Thailand and then subsequent moves through Europe and Africa? As recent history has unfortunately taught us, rendition means transporting a “detainee” such as Abu Zubaydah, who described being “shaved like an animal” amongst other horrifying abuses, to countries with softer regulations surrounding human torture. Here the shades of grey continue. “Black Sites” (sounds so cuddly and loving doesn’t it?) are not for the purpose of torture, now it’s termed “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” (or EIT for short). Such reductive and meaningless language for such horrific acts of human on human destruction. EIT sounds so much better than torture, as does “collateral damage” for the destruction of an entire village or “Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome” rather than the more hard hitting and horribly accurate, shell shock.
After being shaved akin to an animal, Abu Zubaydah was caged in a white painted constantly lit prison cell with either the incessant hiss of intensely loud white noise or music pumped into his cell where he wasn’t allowed to sleep and was either “walled” (pinned forcibly against a wall), “hung” (on tiptoes and chained upright against prison bars), forced into constant stress positions, face slapped, before he had to face the horrors of a “fake burial”, containment within an even smaller space than the fake coffin and the grotesque headline grabbing “waterboarding”. Again, the shades of grey must be seen here, for waterboarding read “drowning” and not a simulation of drowning as often inserted into news stories, but actual drowning. Pushing a detainee to this point of near death was allowed but God forbid leaving marks on their skins. See the shades of death again? (grey, surely? Film Editor). From this point on, the detainee has a “learned helplessness” whereby essentially they’ve been broken akin to an animal and will simply comply with whatever horrors await them. This is seen as a success of the SERE techniques of torture (sorry, enhanced interrogation techniques) and from there, the shades of grey in this human tragedy of a story really begin to bubble to the surface.
Gibney tells this inhumane and unspeakable story via the medium of recently unredacted files, books and interviews with the key operatives throughout the US Government at the time as well as their shadowy co-conspirators in torture and horrific human rights violations. Videotapes are destroyed, chains in command are broken, legality justified, the good guys are honourable patriots and the war on terror is being won by the guys high on the hog of retirement whilst a single human being, convicted of not a single crime, has been caged like an animal for two decades and will remain indefinitely and, without a documentary such as Gibney’s, incommunicado for the remainder of his life.
Gibney was refused permission to talk to the forever prisoner and instead paints and enhances the story via the numerous drawings provided by Abu Zubaydah of his earliest torturous treatment of two decades ago and despite providing a key link in the terrorist chain that led to arrests nearly twenty years ago, he remains highly communicative with his legal teams despite his horrific treatment, yet is deemed virtually worthless in regards to new crucial evidence in the forever war on terrorism that provides forever prisoners such as he.
Thanks for reading. Just for larks as always, and always a human reaction rather than spoilers galore. My three most recently published film articles are linked below or there’s well over 100 blog articles (with 300+ individual film reviews) within my archives from which to choose:
“The Greatest Beer Run Ever” (2022)
“War is not a TV show”medium.com
“tick, tick…BOOM!” (2021)
Astounding central performance and lots of ticking but definitely no boom.medium.com
“A Small Fortune” (2021)
A film of two unconvincing and unexciting halvesmedium.com