...a glitter-trash documentary about the hick who became Iraq's dictator/living god, "Uncle Saddam" (what the childern of his flunkies call him) focuses on the opulent lifestyle of the title subject, who resembles a cross between the world's worst Stalin impersonator and a "Miami Vice" Columbian drug cartel leader. Joel Soler told the Iraqi government that he was there to film how the economic sanctions were killing Iraqi children; instead he interviewed the head of the Saddam art museum, talked with Hussein's architect, filmed models of the gigantic mosque (larger than the one in Mecca) the dictator was building, and collected film of Saddam's extended family, along with footage of torture victims and executions. The dying children of the sanctions and "no-fly zone" bombing are shown, but only in a short montage with some schmaltzy music in the background, and over the end credits.
In a style reminicent of a cheap infomercial, "Uncle Saddam" recounts Saddam's crummy upbringing in Tikrit, where he was the fatherless son of a shepherding clan. Through guile he forced the family to pay for his education, where he became a lawyer, attempted assasinations on the Iraqi leadership, fled to Egypt, but later returned. He became the security man of the Ba'th Arab Socialist Party, and used his position to wrest control of the country from the Ba'th leader when that party came to power in the late 1970's. From then on, blood ran like water as Iraq invaded Iran in 1979, whose Shi'ite fundamentalists had just overthrown the Shah (not mentioned in the film.) Also not mentioned is how every weapons-producing state sold Saddam arms in order to fight Iran, then seen as a threat to the world's oil supply. Like all oil-producing non-democracies, Hussein's government quckly became rife with nepotism, as all of his close relatives became heads of various government offices. As the Iran-Iraq war drew to a close in the late 1980's, an inter-family blood feud began to see who would succeed Saddam. Most of his close relatives wound up dead or crippled by Iraq's secret police. By the time of the first Gulf War, Iraq no longer looked like a Nassarite state; instead it had become a cross between a faux kingdom and the USSR in the late 1930's, with massive palaces for the leadership and grotesque statues or mosaics of Hussein everywhere. The disaster that was the US-Iraq war fell heavily on the shoulders of Iraq's people, but the sanctions actually helped Saddam's grip over the people (something also not discussed in the film) by forcing them to either support the regime or starve, because the Iraq government was collaborating with the "Oil for Food" program. Meanwhile, Hussein lived like the Saudi royalty, and developed Howard Hughes-like habits (fear of microbes, baths twice a day), and a fetish for security (Saddam doubles, underground bunkers.)
Now that Hussein is gone, a film like "Uncle Saddam" makes for a good "I told you so" by American war supporters to those who opposed it, but both the war supporters and the film-maker forget one thing: Iraq is an artificial state, cut out of the Ottoman Empire by the British after WWI. It has never been held together except by monarchy or dictatorship, and Achmad Chalabi (whose uncle, I think, was interviewed by Soler) who has been living in London for twenty years and is wanted in Jordan for a bank scam, probably will not cut it as "president." Like Yugoslavia, Iraq will probably partition into seperate enclaves of Sunni, Shi'ite, and Kurdish peoples, leaving only the bricks stamped with Saddam's name and this film depicting those bricks as testament to that entity once known as Iraq.
In a style reminicent of a cheap infomercial, "Uncle Saddam" recounts Saddam's crummy upbringing in Tikrit, where he was the fatherless son of a shepherding clan. Through guile he forced the family to pay for his education, where he became a lawyer, attempted assasinations on the Iraqi leadership, fled to Egypt, but later returned. He became the security man of the Ba'th Arab Socialist Party, and used his position to wrest control of the country from the Ba'th leader when that party came to power in the late 1970's. From then on, blood ran like water as Iraq invaded Iran in 1979, whose Shi'ite fundamentalists had just overthrown the Shah (not mentioned in the film.) Also not mentioned is how every weapons-producing state sold Saddam arms in order to fight Iran, then seen as a threat to the world's oil supply. Like all oil-producing non-democracies, Hussein's government quckly became rife with nepotism, as all of his close relatives became heads of various government offices. As the Iran-Iraq war drew to a close in the late 1980's, an inter-family blood feud began to see who would succeed Saddam. Most of his close relatives wound up dead or crippled by Iraq's secret police. By the time of the first Gulf War, Iraq no longer looked like a Nassarite state; instead it had become a cross between a faux kingdom and the USSR in the late 1930's, with massive palaces for the leadership and grotesque statues or mosaics of Hussein everywhere. The disaster that was the US-Iraq war fell heavily on the shoulders of Iraq's people, but the sanctions actually helped Saddam's grip over the people (something also not discussed in the film) by forcing them to either support the regime or starve, because the Iraq government was collaborating with the "Oil for Food" program. Meanwhile, Hussein lived like the Saudi royalty, and developed Howard Hughes-like habits (fear of microbes, baths twice a day), and a fetish for security (Saddam doubles, underground bunkers.)
Now that Hussein is gone, a film like "Uncle Saddam" makes for a good "I told you so" by American war supporters to those who opposed it, but both the war supporters and the film-maker forget one thing: Iraq is an artificial state, cut out of the Ottoman Empire by the British after WWI. It has never been held together except by monarchy or dictatorship, and Achmad Chalabi (whose uncle, I think, was interviewed by Soler) who has been living in London for twenty years and is wanted in Jordan for a bank scam, probably will not cut it as "president." Like Yugoslavia, Iraq will probably partition into seperate enclaves of Sunni, Shi'ite, and Kurdish peoples, leaving only the bricks stamped with Saddam's name and this film depicting those bricks as testament to that entity once known as Iraq.