Taxi to the Dark Side

Taxi to the Dark Side
By John Flemming

It’s been almost a year to the day since film director Alex Gibney released his shockingly profound documentary “Taxi to the Dark Side”; and a year later, the film’s morally piercing content is still soaking Americans’ conscious with guilt and embarrassment.

Guilt and embarrassment, for the unspeakable atrocities committed at the U.S. facilities of Abu Ghraib in Iraq, Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, which are masterfully chronicled in the film’s unrelenting investigation into the systematic implementation of policies that have led to the widespread abuse of detainees.

The film, which won the Academy Award for best documentary, starts with a narrow focus of the issue, depicting the story of Dilawar, an Afghani taxi driver, who is mistaken for a terrorist, detained, tortured, and then killed while under U.S. custody. As the movie dives into the seemingly isolated incident of Dilawar’s death, it quickly becomes apparent that this was not the result of a few “bad apples” actions.

Rather, Gibney presents a thorough investigation that includes raw footage and photographs of abuse, interviews with other torture victims, interrogators, law makers and government officials that all serve to illustrate a larger problem affecting these detention centers.

Slowly, but surely, Gibney’s film climbs the chain of command all the way to Donald Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush, exposing damning evidence at every level of a premeditated attempt to circumvent the Geneva Conventions. The Bush administration’s legal undertaking to redefine what constitutes torture, corroborated in the film with interviews of John Yoo, shows that the cancerous policies started at the top and trickled all the way down to the foot soldiers. In effect, the strategic institutionalizing of these measures reshaped the military culture and allowed for these horrific acts to be carried out in what was deemed to be a rational framework of “standard operating procedures”.

The scary thing about “Taxi” that makes it so powerful as a work of art is that, unlike most documentaries, the images and interviews used really do speak for themselves. There is no room for debate; the incidents depicted aren’t defendable, and as a form of journalism “Taxi” illuminates the truth, no matter how repulsive it may be. The simplistic nature of the documentary: its dry, non-sensationalist cinematography, minimal input by its creators (compare the filmmakers’ commentary in this movie to a Michael Moore film), and presenting a fair account, all further serve to establish this film as being a mainly indisputable, solid work of art and journalism.

After watching the movie, even through all the shame and guilt it leaves you with, even after the cruel and inhumane images are burned in your memories, even after you realize that these abuses date back to at least 2002 and perhaps are still occurring, you cannot help but to be heartened by the fact this documentary proves there are those of us who adamantly believe in the transparency, integrity, accountability, and respect for human life that made this country great and will go to extraordinary lengths to defend these ideals. And it’s great to know that with the executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay facility, there are those in power now who will work to restore the ideals of our founding fathers.