Operation Filmmaker
Operation Filmmaker isn’t perfect, but does a great job of pulling the viewer back and forth between sympathies (or antipathies, as the case may be).You see the producers’ point (this is his job, and the alternative to his doing it is his returning to Iraq, so…), but you also see Muthana’s point (the “job” as he understood it did not involve blending trail mix, and someone should have explained to him what duties he could expect to perform), and the filmmaker’s point (she’s trying to show both sides, but then her story has two sides of its own, whether she’s acting as a documentarian courting a subject or a friend genuinely interested in Muthana’s welfare), and then Muthana’s again…nobody comes out looking very good, but the film itself raises excellent, uncomfortable questions about society’s expectations of, or for, the less fortunate.
It seems clear that Liev Schreiber and Peter Saraf did expect Muthana’s gratitude for the opportunity to Zamboni over any cultural or emotional bumps in the ice; it also seems clear that, when the ice stayed rutted, they found this hurtful and rude (Schreiber more the former, Saraf more the latter, but both gave me the cringies in equal measure).Particularly in Saraf’s case, you see a guy who’s accustomed to having his ass kissed, to hearing a soft rain of hosannas for even a tiny and demeaning “opportunity,” and when a grand gesture like plucking Muthana out of Iraq and putting him on a European location set isn’t met with the groveling and docility he expects, he’s offended by that.
But the larger issue is that nobody predicted this, because nobody apparently understood that a disadvantaged person’s entire personality is not in fact premised 24/7 around his disadvantage.So if you asked anyone involved in the situation, “Does Muthana like mushrooms?”, the question wouldn’t make sense to them on some level, like, “Does Muthana ‘like’ mushr– but Muthana lives in a place where bombs go off daily!”Yeeeees, but that doesn’t preclude him from having an opinion on mushrooms.
I don’t exclude myself from that mode of thinking; we’ve all done it without meaning to, no doubt.And dealing with that insulated mindset doesn’t take Muthana off the hook for from meeting benchmarks of professional behavior; that the pity of other people isn’t three-dimensional doesn’t mean Muthana isn’t an ass at times.Certain shit needed doing, Muthana had problems focusing; that’s an issue.But the production seemed to feel that the generosity of their actions would take care of everything else, when in fact you would want to explain to any prospective employee what the job is — and Muthana is an intern.Mixing the producer’s gorp is almost a parody of itself, something out of State and Main, but that’s what interns do.
But then on the other hand when Saraf wonders why Muthana didn’t ingratiate himself with someone who would be helpful to him, you want to ask Saraf why he didn’t consider the possibility that that plan of attack is culturally unique to Hollywood.It isn’t, of course, but they saw Muthana on MTV talking about his dreams of filmmaking, they saw an opportunity to take credit for saving his life and giving him a career, and then they provided no cultural or professional translator for him.Not that Iraqis don’t understand the concept of sucking up, but the idea that Muthana would know what to do after his fairy godfathers got him a short-term Czech visa is short-sighted in this self-aggrandizing “well, we held up OUR end” kind of way; it doesn’t account for any idea besides “the rest of the world is so obsessed with American culture, or film-set culture, that everyone in it will already know its every nuance.”
When the Rock shows up, it’s same thing.I like the Rock a lot, so I winced a little at the simplistic way he seemed to see the transaction…but then I also cringed at Muthana’s mercurial attitude towards the politics of favor-asking.Someone should have been forward-thinking enough to realize that you can’t just bring a guy out of Iraq and then shrug, “Well, you shoulda thought of that” when his visa is about to run out.Or…can you?Whose responsibility is Muthana, in the end?Should that forward-thinking “someone” have been Muthana himself?Once you’ve given him a hand, do you have the right to pull it back?
But then…but then…and from the other side…you could go on like that all day with this movie, which is what makes a movie worth seeing.Check it out.
Tags: Liev Schreiber movies Muthana Mohmed mutual asshat societies Nina Davenport Peter Saraf The Rock
So if you asked anyone involved in the situation, “Does Muthana like mushrooms?”, the question wouldn’t make sense to them on some level, like, “Does Muthana ‘like’ mushr– but Muthana lives in a place where bombs go off daily!”
Ha, I laughed out loud at that one. That’s a great way of describing that extremely pernicious attitude; on the one hand, yeah I’ve done it too and it’s easy to fall into, and on the other hand, a lot of people don’t seem to get that it’s something you should try to avoid instead of something that shows what a good person you are.
This movie seems a little cringe-inducing for my taste (I over-empathize with characters in movies. especially documentaries. I was a wreck by the end of Wordplay) but also interesting, so maybe I’ll see if I can get other people to watch it with me to distract me from the awkward.
Argh! I just saw this movie, and I felt so strange afterward. NO ONE came off well, and it just didn’t sit right with me somehow (even though I am glad I watched it.) I appreciate the perspective, it makes me feel a little better. Good timing!
Since the movie is a few years old, I wonder what the kid is up to now. I wonder how he feels about the movie (or if he has even seen it.) Does anyone know of any good articles about it?
When it comes right down to it, this isn’t much different from the several Lost Boys of the Sudan documentaries of several years ago. They dream of coming here for an education; we don’t understand why they’re not delighted with a shabby apartment and a job at Wal-Mart.
Most cringe-worthy to me was that the Rock wanted a camera on hand to capture his generosity. Yikes.
Interesting…I hadn’t heard of this before, somehow, and I’m definitely intrigued. Will check it out…thanks for the review.
Thanks for an intriguing review. I’ll have to check it out. Though perhaps my cringe-ometer needs recalibrating. I found Wordplay big-hearted and kind of joyous, on the whole.
Also, “mutual asshat societies,” heh.
Before watching this movie, I expected that I would be seeing some privileged Hollywood obliviousness from the filmmakers and I would end up rooting for Muthana. But what surprised me when I saw it was how often I ended up agreeing with the Everything Is Illuminated people’s final assessments of him. It’s not that I agree with Saraf that Muthana should have learned to be a suck-up or a phony ingratiator, but Saraf was right that if Muthana really wanted to stay out of Iraq, he should have started figuring out how to do that as soon as he could. As the film went on, it seemed to me that he was fairly spoiled and lazy in a way that has nothing to do with his cultural background (I have met some similarly spoiled and entitled Americans in their 20s and 30s). He really did not take responsibility for his own planning, preferring instead to take the easy way out and allow others to rescue him at the last minute(s) and solve his problems for him over and over. There is a difference between having to beg and scrape for something (which only Saraf seemed to be asking him to do) and being expected to work at achieving your goals. I kept thinking that all the time and effort he spent manipulating others (including the documentarians) into to doing his work for him would have been much better spent working directly on his own life, but he seemed to have a sense of automatic entitlement that blocked the possibility that he could gain some maturity from his experiences. You are correct that nobody comes out of the film looking very good, but in my opinion, Muthana definitely comes out looking worse than anyone else.
Update from http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/operationfilmmaker/film.html
Muthana Mohmed received five years asylum in the United Kingdom and is still living in London trying to make films.
Liev Schreiber’s film, Everything is Illuminated, was released to critical acclaim in 2005 by Warner Independent Pictures and garnered a number of awards for the first-time director.
The Universal Pictures science fiction/horror film, Doom, starring The Rock, opened in late 2005 in the United States and the United Kingdom. (The Rock is also known as actor Dwayne Johnson and is the man who paid for Muthana’s tuition at the London Film Academy.)
Documentary filmmaker Nina Davenport is living in New York City and is expecting her first child in December 2008.
I felt sorry for the filmmaker Nina who had to film the ungrateful muthana. I don’t know how she could have put up with his spoiled intitled behavior. I found myself cringing at his antics and I’m sure he has amounted to nothing!