Posted on 11/25/2002 12:28:05 PM PST by weegee
The Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World of Saddam Hussein By MATT ZOLLER SEITZ c.2002 Newhouse News Service
NEW YORK -- As the United States prepares to go to war with Iraq, "Uncle Saddam," a new documentary about Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, would seem to fall under the heading, "Know thine enemy."
But this film by French director Joel Soler is so full of weird, unpleasant details that viewers might classify it under a different heading: "More Information Than I Needed."
Combining testimony from Saddam's cabinet ministers, video footage from Saddam's official chroniclers and news snippets from Middle Eastern sources, "Uncle Saddam" depicts a dimestore Stalin -- an eccentric thug who executes anyone who dares oppose him, blankets Iraq with portraits and statues of himself, fishes by tossing hand grenades into ponds and insists that well-wishers greet him with a ceremonial kiss on each armpit.
The documentary about Saddam's personality and family life premieres Tuesday at 7 p.m. EST on Cinemax.
"Uncle Saddam" might be the riskiest prank every played by a filmmaker. Soler, a slender, bespectacled, 34-year-old wiseacre from France, traveled to Iraq in the summer of 1999 and persuaded Saddam's cabinet officials to talk to him by falsely claiming he was making a film about the country's architectural heritage and its suffering under U.N. sanctions. Soler was actually there to get dirty details about Saddam, who was said to be a classic loony-bird dictator.
"I'm still surprised they let me in," Soler said during an interview in New York. "They originally let me in there because I know a little bit about Sumerian art, which flourished between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (which flow through Iraq). They felt like, `Wow! We're going to be presented as the continuation of the Sumerians!"'
The ruse worked. Soler never got in the same room with Saddam. But he did get access to his underlings and to video footage not previously seen in the West. The result is a rude caricature of a vain, petty man who controls an oil-rich but cash-poor country through sheer brute force.
"Saddam Hussein has not spoken with a reporter for over 10 years," Soler said. But Soler did get some nifty images from Iraqi TV, whose slogan might be "All Saddam, All the Time."
"Iraqi TV is amazing," Soler said. "It's like the Anna Nicole Smith show without sound. They just follow Saddam around all day, and there's no sound. It's just music and flowers."
The eccentricities pile up from there. We find out that Saddam lectures the public on personal hygiene and that he likes firing weapons into the air during public appearances (no word on where, or on whom, the bullets descend). We see Iraq's national art gallery, which appears to be filled entirely with portraits of Saddam. We visit lavish palaces that house the dictator and his large extended family, and a proposed super-mosque hoped to be larger than the one in Mecca. All were built with public funds at a time when the average wage for an Iraqi commoner was a few dollars a month.
All this information is conveyed in a light, satirical manner, with biting narration written by "Kids in the Hall" cast member Scott Thompson, a one-time roommate of Soler's. Made prior to 9/11, the film has a tone similar to "Roger & Me," "The Atomic Cafe" or other documentaries that mix populist anger with snotty sarcasm.
As a main character, Saddam might seem charmingly odd if he weren't known as a notorious strongman who tortures dissidents and has gassed his own people. Soler waits until the film's second half to explore the uglier details of Saddam's rule, and when he does, it wipes the smile off your face. We see graphic images of people who were tortured by Saddam's minions, plus how-to drawings distributed to the torturers (one diagram depicts a blowtorch).
During the two months he spent in Iraq, Soler was continually at risk of being found out as an impostor, which might have led to expulsion (or worse). During the first part of the filming, he worked alone with a small camcorder; during the second phase, he hooked up with a crew of French filmmakers who really were making a documentary about the effect of U.N. sanctions.
After a while, Iraqi officials assigned to monitor Soler got suspicious. "At one point, near the end, they knew. I was pushing my luck every day."
When Soler was caught shooting footage inside one of Saddam's palaces, an Iraqi interior minister told him, "Joel, ... I know what you're doing with that small camera."
Yet none of Saddam's officials took action to stop him. Soler still isn't sure why.
"I have been told that certain agents of the Iraqi government were punished for not figuring out what I was doing."
How were they punished?
"I don't know," he said. "I do know that Saddam's interior designer (who is extensively quoted in Soler's film) was poisoned about a month after I left."
Was it related to Soler's film?
"I don't know," Soler said.
His expression suggested he'd rather not think about it.
"Uncle Saddam" was rejected by France's biggest TV networks as "American propaganda." But while Soler says he is glad the United Nations finally rallied to force new arms inspections, he opposes unilateral U.S. action to remove Saddam for trying to build nuclear weapons. He says the main reason the United States wants to invade is that Iraq possesses enormous reserves of oil.
"The real threat Hussein poses today is to his own people," Soler said. "That's why the United Nations should go in there and get him. How much more should his people have to go through?"
What of Saddam's complaint -- picked up by self-styled holy warrior Osama bin Laden, as well as some elements of the Western left -- that sanctions against Iraq have done nothing but starve Iraqi civilians?
"That's just bull----, I'm sorry," Soler said. "Saddam is using the embargo as an excuse to starve his own people. He says, `You see what these Americans are doing to us?' Yet somehow he's found the money to build a whole resort town for his little entourage. Maybe he should have put a little of that money into buying food instead, if he cares so much."
Like any hungry filmmaker, Soler is grateful for attention. But he worries that it's the wrong kind.
He asked that this article not mention the names of any of his family members or their hometowns, because he's afraid of reprisals from the Iraqi government, or from Saddam sympathizers in the United States.
In the past few months, Soler says, he has received threatening phone calls and found a homemade kerosene bomb in his trash (police removed it). Somebody splattered the side of his home with red paint. During an online chat to promote the film, an anonymous critic chimed in to say he should be dipped in an "acid bath."
Soler stresses that he never meant to defame a country or a culture -- only the dictator who runs it. Nor is he just another troublemaking Western interloper; he has personal connections to the material.
Soler's family is descended from the Moors of Spain, which means he has Arab blood. His family spent much of the 20th century in Algeria, formerly a French colony. In the early '60s, Soler's grandfather was shot to death for refusing to support the country's bid for independence.
In the late '80s, Soler worked as a salesman for Chanel, handling accounts in Arab countries. He says he "fell in love with the Middle East," studied Islam and considered converting. The rise of militant Islam -- a violent strain championed by the likes of bin Laden -- stopped him.
"(The prophet) Mohammed was a great man," Soler said. "He was the first to give rights to women in the seventh century. He would not approve of freaks like bin Laden. If he could see what is happening in that part of the world right now, I don't think he'd be happy."
"That's just bull----, I'm sorry," Soler said. "Saddam is using the embargo as an excuse to starve his own people. He says, `You see what these Americans are doing to us?' Yet somehow he's found the money to build a whole resort town for his little entourage. Maybe he should have put a little of that money into buying food instead, if he cares so much."
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