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FLICKS: Iraq In Fragments With the continued success of nonfiction film in recent years, there have been quite a few movies about the Iraq War, now, with James Longley’s award-winning film Iraq in Fragments, we can view the crisis from the point of view of the Iraqis themselves by Chris Dashiell - The Film Snob With the continued success of nonfiction film in recent years, there have been quite a few movies about the Iraq War, in fact an unprecedented number of feature films about a current military conflict. Most of them have either been critiques of the political situation, such as Robert Greenwald's Uncovered: the War on Iraq, or as in the case of last year's excellent Operation: Dreamland, focused on the experiences of American soldiers. Now, with James Longley's award-winning film Iraq in Fragments, we can view the crisis from the point of view of the Iraqis themselves.

Longley spent three years in Iraq, from the fall of Baghdad in 2003 to early last year, and he gained an astonishing level of trust from the people he filmed. It must have been dangerous work, considering that he's an American, not embedded with the military, living side by side with Iraqis. But Iraq in Fragments is not only a filmed witnessing of real events in the war-ravaged country, it's also a work of visual daring and beauty, and that makes it practically one of a kind.

The movie contains three parts, corresponding to the three main ethnic groups in Iraq. In Part One we meet an eleven-year old boy, a Sunni, living in a poor section of Baghdad and working in a machine shop. The boss abuses and humiliates him, and the relationship seems to reflect the psychology of living under dictatorship and occupation. Part Two takes us to southern Iraq where militant Shiites rally behind the radical cleric Moktada el-Sadr. Here we are right in the midst of the simmering anger and religious zealotry that has helped ignite civil war, and the tension is palpable. In Part Three we meet a boy living in a Kurdish village in northern Iraq. The Kurds have established their own separatist enclave, and this section seems more hopeful, but there are conflicts and contradictions here as well. The boy wants to go to college, but economic realities dictate that he stay home, herding sheep and working in the brick kilns to support his father.

Longley's color photography is so vivid it's stunning. He combines this with bravura editing techniques and camera movement that you normally associate with fiction films. Through quick cutting we see the same locations at different times or from different angles. Long shots combined with zooms create an almost otherworldly effect. It's as if this was an art film, staged for the camera, but in fact it's real, and the picture's dazzling methods make the experience of being in this country seem utterly immediate.

Up until now all we've seen have been images from television news, and the point of view of American soldiers. In this film, we experience life in Iraq more vividly than seems possible a half a world away. We may draw political conclusions from what we see—the people in the film are not shy about their opinions, which often accompany the images in voice-over. But Longley is even-handed—the point is to catch a glimpse of the reality, complex and tragic, of this beautiful and unfortunate land. Iraq in Fragments is both a portrait of a country being torn apart, and a description of our own limited perceptions, aided here by a film of passion and commitment.