Reviews

I thoroughly enjoyed this show. It is the only tv show or move that I know of that portrays indigenous people in depth in way that strikes me as honest and not as caricatures or cartoons. The filming is gorgeous and the storytelling is very clever. The problem with telling stories about indigenous people is that they are inherently subtle, understated, modest, and quiet compared to Europeans and Americans so ... less drama. So naturally there were plenty of selfish and destructive white people there to drive the plotline. Additionally, what the storytellers did that I thought was really clever was to cover two separate timelines that were ~20 years apart. It gets a little difficult to follow at times but it's totally worth the extra effort. Unfortunately there is no indication that Netflix is going to sponsor a second season:-(

Come to this skeptical and expecting a great big flop. Of course most "religious' people will hate it because the messiah doesn't pick their false "religion" over all the other "false" religions. I really appreciated the way that the storytellers used the intelligence officers to emphasize how utterly out of touch with reality most people are. The intelligence officers spend the entire time speculating about the 'messiah's' motives - and get it wrong every time - because they can't understand that some people just want to encourage other people to be fully human! From their perspective that's inconceivable! The story shows how just by encouraging people to be human the 'messiah' creates chaos because our modern societies demand the opposite ... that we give up our humanity in order to serve the system. And so the law enforcement types feel threatened and accuse Goldshiri of starting wars when in fact it was the systems that they serve that started the wars. Absolutely brilliant writing!

I believe that destiny demands a second season :-) Certainly the writers left themselves lots of narrative threads that could be picked up and followed. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part that Netflix will continue to support a story that will encourage people to ask better questions.

If you're looking for a fair and balanced representation of the diversity of Christians then this is not for you. If you are curious to understand more about the national phenomenon of large groups of citizens who form political/social opinions based on a complete lack of understanding of the actual issues at hand, then you will get a lot out of "Selling God". I gave this film a 10 of 10 for the simple reason that it tells a compelling story that contains facts about history and contemporary society and it does so in a way that I found engaging, educational, and very humorous.

Often times fundamentalist leaders speak of ignorance as if it were a virtue, and as if cultivating knowledge and understanding of the world around you is somehow antithetical to having faith. One of the most frightening manifestations of this phenomenon was best exemplified by George W. Bush when he bragged that the only book that he reads is the bible. I mean come on, who in there right mind can believe that is a good quality in a political leader?!! Having faith that God gave you the ability to do your job is one thing, but to believe that you don't have to do your job because you have faith that God will do it for you is just insane. Note to self: never go to a fundamentalist doctor ("...never studied medicine very much, but I have faith that this pill ($100) will cure you. This movie describes Christian fundamentalism as a marketing campaign and I have to say that the model fits very well.

1. Create a Need (Original sin and man's sinful nature) 2. Offer a product or service (Salvation though Jesus and since he's not here we'll be his agent and you have to trust us as much as you trust him) 3. Rewards and Consequences (Go to Heaven or Hell) 4. Create urgency (The future's uncertain and the end is always near!)

Made me think that modern marketing and public relations strategies are based on the whopping success of the Catholic church who enjoyed a virtual monopoly on every aspect of people lives for over 1000 years. Something that Walmart aspires to emulate I imagine.

Lastly I want to refute what a previous reviewer said about the film not making an effort to distinguish fundamentalists from sincere Christians who humbly draw personal strength from their faith in God without all of the hatred and ignorance. In fact 2 of the 5 (or so) contributing interviewees consistently represented Christianity as something that normal and healthy humans engage in as a way to muster the inner strength to be MORE loving and accepting of the world around them ... as something different from fundamentalism. Even Noam Chomsky expressed his personal view that for many the Christian faith is a healthy and socially integrative practice in contrast to the socially destructive nature of fundamentalism.

I'm writing to respond to the many reviews that have labeled this movie as propaganda. The movie is about events as they unfolded on the ground and what it is actually like to be on the ground during an invasion. Not the most well scripted movie I've seen, but the action was riveting and the feel of a war zone was authentic.

Apparently some of the reviewers believe that if they were on the ground watching their community being destroyed they would be much more calm and fair in dispensing blame. I'm going to guess that they are all Americans because they think that war is a battle of good vs. evil and that there are legitimate reasons to drop bombs on civilian population centers!!! (BTW- I'm an American too) DROPPING BOMBS ON CIVILIANS IS A WAR CRIME!!! Not only do people die, but communities are destroyed, children are orphaned and in these conditions hatred breeds like wildfire. The men in aircrafts dropping bombs on a foreign population of civilians are ALWAYS the bad guys.

None of the reviews that I read discussed the cause of the conflict in any meaningful way. I myself have not researched the origins of the conflict in depth, but I can tell several things right off the bat. First of all I don't doubt that some Georgians were violent towards Russians. When you consider the fact that the Soviet Union imposed a police state on the Georgians for over 50 years its not surprizing that the Georgians would want to chase the heartless foreigners from their country. Have you ever heard first hand accounts of what it was like to live under the police state of the Soviet Union. It was brutal. The terrorism was constant for over 50 years. They had informants in every aspect of the society that they were occupying (from Estonia to Hungary to Georgia) and they monitored peoples' political leanings and dissent was not tolerated. People disappeared on a regular basis. Terrorism. Try to imagine what it was like to live under that kind of blatant and brutal oppression for more than 2 generations before you comment judge the Georgians for whatever crimes they committed against Russians citizens in Ossentia. Its not surprizing to me that the Georgian people would want to kill the men who once managed the police state and probably got rich doing it.

As an example that even an American may understand, lets consider the last time that our country was invaded by foreign troops - late 18th century. Did you know that the minutemen of Massachusetts were brutal in their treatment of the sympathizers of the British crown - known as Tories? It became commonplace for the minutemen to publicly tar-and- feather a supporter of the British crown and then to burn their house down. Not to mention the corporate vandalism that destroyed great chunks of British corporate wealth ... most notably, the Boston Tea Party. Given that fact (and that many Tories were murdered outright) does anyone today feel that the British were justified in invading a foreign land of people who had decided to claim independence? If the British had the kind of air support that the Russians have, we'd very likely still be a British colony today. The idea that the Russians had the right to use overwhelming military force defend the safety of Russian citizens in a foreign country is blatantly fascist.

Another thing that I can tell you is that the Georgians have significant oil deposits and they were in the process of opening their oil to western markets ... if you want to discern the true reason for any war one should follow the economic implications and most of the time that will lead you straight to the actual cause of the war.

In summary, "5 days War" may not be an in depth and balanced account of all of the factors that led to the conflict but it will serve to humanize the true cost of war. And the use of foreign journalists to tell the story is the most logical way to tell such a story because in the real world that is the only way we can ever understand what is actually happening in such a conflict. Military officials coldly refer to their mass murder as "collateral damage" and any modern military WILL always underestimate their numbers which is why we should pay attention to what journalists tell us about such brutal crimes against humanity.

This documentary takes you through various aspects of life in Cuba - Economy, transportation, health-care, agriculture, education - and explores how they dealt with the dramatic reduction of fossil fuels to a mere fraction of their pre 1990 levels. It was nice to meet the people, see the sights, and hear the sounds. The overall feeling was that the Cubans had improved the quality of their life (after a difficult "Special Period"). Their health was better, greater sense of community, better food and healthier land. I was left with the question: Why should we wait until we run out of oil? Let's do it now. The part that I did not expect was how it challenged my understanding of the difference between a Communist country and Capitalism. Did you know that a greater percentage of Cubans own their own home than in America? More farmers now own their own land? Sort of turns the notion of what a "Free-Market" is on its head! Check it out.