Friday, July 26, 2013

100 Words on…. The Power of Nightmares















This is a rare chance to see a powerful film that never aired on American TV or had a standard theatrical run since its BBC debut in 2004. Adam Curtis’s occasionally deadpan, always dead-serious documentary traces the parallel rise of radical Islamists in the Middle East and neoconservative ideologues in the U.S., making the case that each group gained power by fomenting fear of the other to create global mayhem. The film’s sometimes earnest, sometimes ironic use of well chosen archival footage, talking heads interviews, and music “sometimes has the feel of a Noam Chomsky lecture channeled by Monty Python,” as Peter Bergen wrote for The Nation.

Written for The L Magazine

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