THE OATH

This film is the second in a trilogy by documentarian Laura Poitras that examines “America post 9/11.”  The first My Country, My Country, took on the U.S. occupation of Iraq. This time Poitras set out to tell the story of someone who had been released from the Guantanamo prison...and then she happened to meet Abu Jandal.  As is so often the case with documentaries the story you thought you were going tell becomes something else.   is still the story of someone released from the hands of the U.S. but it is also about the first person tried at Guantanamo, Salim Hamdan.

It is still a story about Guantanamo, but Abu Jandal is the storyteller, and he was never there.  Yet he takes us as close to Osama Bin Laden as we’ve probably ever been.  Jandal drives a taxicab in Sana’a, Yemen where he lives with his son (and presumably an offscreen wife.)  Jandal describes how be became a jihadist and ultimately wound up as Bin Laden’s bodyguard in Afghanistan.  Jandal recruited Salim Hamdan, his brother-in-law, who then became Bin Laden’s driver.

But the two men’s journey diverged just before 9/11.  Jandal was arrested and in prison when the attack took place.  Samdan was immediately picked up and transferred to Guantanamo, where he became the first person tried for his involvement in the attack.  So as Jandal tells his story, sharing his beliefs about Islam, his rationale for jihad, and the changes to that perspective, at the same time we watch the fight surrounding the trial of Samdan who tested the constitutionality of Bush’s military tribunals.

Jandal is indeed charismatic as he conducts discussion with young men in his apartment.  But as we hear his story unfold, we become more an more aware of his sadness, a man with a sincere belief that has changed, evolved.  By the end we are meant to feel the humanity of someone who if not still an enemy is still somewhat alien in his beliefs to most westerners.  I’m not sure that Poitras’ aim, to make this character sympathetic, succeeds and maybe that’s not what she wanted.  Humanization doesn’t necessarily require that we sympathize only that there is recognition, an understanding that a person is not a monster.  We never see Samdan, he has refused to appear before the press.  As for Jandal who by the end has lost his livlihood, we are left wondering where he will go next.  

The Oath opens May 21, 2010.

Produced and directed by Laura Poitras; edited by Jonathan Oppenheim; cinematography by Kirsten Johnson and Laura Poitras; music by  Osvaldo Golijov.

With:  Abu Jandal.