Monday, October 3, 2011
Heavy Metal in Baghdad
This film is the best view of the Iraqi common people I have ever seen. Throughout the film, you see how the war has changed the lives of young people in Iraq in such an in-your-face sort of way. Wars are seen from two viewpoints: the oppressors and the heroes. Never before do you see how the lives of every day normal people are changed by what is going on around them. These young men are searching for freedom away from their homes and families, hoping to find new lives. This is much easier said than done, obviously, as they struggle with guilt and remorse for leaving their homeland behind. They have such a passion for their music and for each other that makes them so relatable, so similar to the twenty year-olds in America, that the veil the media has placed over these Middle Eastern people, disintegrates quickly. You suddenly realized that Iraqis are not all extremely religious Muslims brainwashed to believe anything their government tells them. They are just as pissed off about the war, if not more so, than we are. They are tired of seeing their country laid to waste, families and friends lost to a bloody cause. Being a refugee is more than being malnourished in a camp, it is a life on the run, doing what you have to so you can stay alive, and even more importantly, happy. The dream of being a heavy metal band in Iraq is a difficult thing to realize, but the guys in the documentary are working harder to make their dreams come true because this dream is the only thing keeping them going. When everything is taken from you, you can quickly see what is the most important thing in your life. For these guys, it's getting their message across through their music.
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I think your review is interesting. I would like to say however that when looking at countries as complex as Iraq it's never as simple as young people just like us. We definitely aren't that simple and we definitely have not had to grow up in a regime or deal with warfare in these ways throughout our lives. The coverage of these guys, who have strived to break from a regulated norm, was important to showing that Iraqi's are not just an easily grouped people like we try to do to them like we do to everyone else. Keep in mind Baghdad was a place praised for it's culture and modernity in comparison to the west. However you would not have found diversity there when Saddam was in power the way we would like to think there was due to the popular anti-war mis-perceptions. I find it interesting that everything is easy to look at as look at how terrible things are if you don't include all sides of a story or get involved with people outside of a small circle of people. The media tells us what is going on and how to think about these wars and the populus. I think if you were to talk to a wide variety of people from over there, and to talk to people about the ways things changed through the years of war you would be surprised at how different things were even from this film. I also thought it was extremely interesting to see how the bassist said most of the people fighting in the area weren't even Iraqis. I feel that this is another documentary that is willing to put forth effort to show us the other side, but not really go as far as they could to truly help these guys. I feel it was another pity case story to win acclaim. Hopefully one day we can see these guys or an Iraqi band on stage that is on tour having left from their own country and not having to be a sort of refugee in any form.
ReplyDeleteI must add though that I did like the film a lot since I had no idea that bands like this existed on the regime of Saddam. It only makes sense I guess.
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