Why We Fight
DIR Eugene Jarecki | USA | 2004 | 98 min.
SHOWTIMES:
Sun, Oct 2, 1:00pm, GR7
Wed, Oct 5, 9:30, GR7
Reviwed by Gloria Wong
Once a festival, a film comes along that is so precisely of the moment that it seems to capture a disproportionate number of people’s attention at once. The new documentary from Eugene Jarecki (The Trials of Henry Kissinger) is such a film. Like 2003 VIFF Audience Award-Winner The Corporation, Why We Fight tackles important subject matter in a clear and cogent manner that’s entertaining without having to rely on cheap humour and affecting without being melodramatic. The subject of the film is U.S. militarism in the twentieth century. A true dissection of the military-industrial complex, Why We Fight picks up where the largely superficial Fahrenheit 9-11 left off, earning indignation through a well-researched and deftly assembled argument.
The winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, Why We Fight features candid interviews with former CIA officials, former and current members of the US military, think-tank wizards, pundits and even John McCain. Framed by the chillingly prescient farewell address by President Eisenhower in the 1961 who warned against the profit-based motivations of the military-industrial complex (a term he himself coined), Why We Fight is absolutely essential viewing for anyone interested in learning something about why America is the way it is today and how it became that way so quickly.