Blood of My Brother: A Story of Death in Iraq. Powerful, but somehow boring. (*******7/10)
Blood of My Brother is in many ways an incredibly impressive achievement. It is a documentary on the Iraqi war that is incredible in terms of the access these film makers were given to shoot in Iraq. They get behind the scenes at fundamentalist, jihad-fueled rallies. The manage to come along with an attack on American forces. They ride along on a tank with American forces. And no judgements are passed one way or another. There is no narrator in the film. The only dialogue is from the interview subjects themselves. It’s therefore almost all in Arabic, with English subtitles. It follows one particular family so closely that you feel like not only are you there, but you’re almost a family member.
And it’s this Iraqi family that defines both the film and the plight in the country itself. One of their sons and brothers has been killed by American forces while guarding a religious building. His younger brother, Ibrahim, has become the family’s provider. In his heart, he’s torn between a desire for revenge toward the Americans and the need to provide for his family, which would be destitute if he died. This is a real insider’s look at the Iraqi insurgency, as the film takes us inside the Mehdi Army, one of the insurgent groups in Iraq.
All of which makes for some powerful imagery and moving scenes, especially the scenes of mothers weeping over the death and the gravesites of their sons. And yet, somehow, without a narrator to move the story along, and without any defineable position or purpose, it feels more like we’re eavesdropping on tragedy and militant anger, rather than understanding any of it at all. Sure, we understand how the rallies and the speeches and the fury toward the Americans creates an insurgency, and makes suicide bombers out of people who would ordinarily abhor such violence. All of which is an amazing thing to see, in terms of eavesdropping. But as a movie, there just isn’t enough continuity to make it exciting or to make it very watchable. An amazing achievement, a movie that ought to be seen, but one that’s an effort to watch.