Oscar and Spirit Award nominee Laura Poitras returns with her latest film, the second in a post-9/11 trilogy that began with MY COUNTRY, MY COUNTRY. In THE OATH, she offers a surprising and compelling portrait of two brothers-in-law, both former associates of Osama bin Laden - Abu Jandal, who became bin Laden's bodyguard, and Salim Hamdan, who was his driver. Jandal left before 9/11 but Hamdan stayed and was captured and later was the subject of a landmark Superme Court case (Hamdan v. Rumsfeld).
"I’ll be surprised if I see a fiction film at Sundance this year that comes close to the novelistic scope and richness of Laura Poitras’s exemplary documentary THE OATH — or has a character even half as complicated as THE OATH’s main subject, Abu Jandal, a Yemeni cab driver and former Al-Qaeda member."
So begins Dennis Lim's rave on the Sundance Channel's SUNfiltered blog. He continues:
"Even more topical now after the revelation that the foiled Christmas Day bomber received his training in Yemen, Poitras’ film goes so far beyond the media’s customary thumbnail sketches of terrorists as to be almost disorienting. The film’s construction is intricate and provocative: Poitras withholds details about Jandal’s re-education and his post 9/11 interrogation, and keeps our sympathies in constant flux. The boldest and most startling thing about THE OATH is that it presents a jihadist as a complex human being, even a charismatic figure. The implicit question is why we should find that at all surprising."
Writes Eugene Hernandez for indieWIRE:
"A quietly disturbing, often complex portrait of an Al Qaeda insider and a Guantanamo Bay detainee, Laura Poitras’ THE OATH offers a chilling preview of emerging Middle East battleground Yemen and poignantly questions American policies over the past decade in the Middle East...
Told through observational footage, media reports and shooting in Yemen and Guantanamo, the film seemed to puzzle some viewers here at the Sundance fest last night, perhaps because Poitras doesn’t narrate her story to emphasize point of view. Yet, the more you ponder THE OATH, the clearer its message becomes: America imprisoned a man with little apparent connection to the 9/11 attacks and swiftly released an Al Qaeda recruiter who claims a close connection to Osama bin Laden while driving his taxi in Yemen."
Continuing their coverage for Politics Daily, 12TH AND DELAWARE filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady have praise for their colleague:
"First of all, let me just say she has huge, iron-clad cojones for hanging out alone in Yemen for two years and waiting out a difficult and cloudy story with a charming but wholly unreliable protagonist who would slowly dole out material to her when he felt like it. Interweaving the parallel story of Jandal's brother-in-law, who was awaiting trial at Guantanamo, the viewer is allowed access into a former (but maybe not toooootally done with it) jihadi's world view.
Heidi and I spent a couple of months in Saudi Arabia recently ourselves, and got to know some of these "rehabilitated" jihadists. It's important (and rare) for American audiences to see realistic and objective stories of these young men, who feel profoundly that they are on a mission straight from God to rid the planet of the West's influence. THE OATH delivers and informs in a non-inflammatory fashion."
And writing behind the Variety paywall, Robert Koehler summarizes:
"THE OATH alternates between Jandal in Yemen (repeatedly seen behind the wheel of his taxi) and Hamdan behind bars in Guantanamo, awaiting and then undergoing trial in military court. Since Poitras and d.p. Kirsten Johnson were denied access to Hamdan before and during trial, the film captures his voice through his pained prison letters, narrated by Moustafa Ali and accompanied by stark, oddly beautiful exterior shots of Guantanamo prison...
The grime of Sana'a and the artificial order of Guantanamo, as well as the shifting moods on Jandal's face, are effectively captured by Johnson and Poitras' lensing. Jonathan Oppenheim's editing is smooth, using explanatory graphic intertitles for dramatic impact, while Osvaldo Golijov constructs a grim, moody score."
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