The Worst of the Worst: Gibney holds up a mirror to show America its dark side

“This is what we did.” –American Soldier

A grainy video of a man handcuffed and unclothed in a dirty dim-lighted prison hallway. He is beating his head against the wall. Blood appears and the man sinks to his knees. Where is this disgustingly cruel place? Under what form of power could this sort of despair be produced?

Who is to blame?

To answer that question, Alex Gibney directed and narrated “Taxi to the Dark Side,” a haunting documentary tracing the hypocrisy and cruelty of the United States government imprisoning and torturing in the post-9/11 occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. The “dark side” is brutal, as Gibney makes sure to show both the stomach-clenching images of cruelty by ground-level American forces as well the vicious techniques and shameful maneuvers of merciless set of American leaders.

In the beginning, beautiful images of Afghanistan and haunting Arab classical music pierce the eyes and the soul, and Dilawar, an Afghani man imprisoned and killed in Bagram Prison, is introduced. His story, used throughout the film, is clear to demonstrate that cruelty is cruelty regardless of the flag it’s under and despite by whom the power of and for justification is exercised. Real footage of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, and various high-ranking officers are masterfully intertwined with the images of a quiet and rural Afghanistan of Dilawar’s grieving family, showing the contrast between the powerful and the powerless. Throughout the scenes of Dilwar’s family and the Afghan countryside, Gibeny and Eva Orner, the talented Australian producer, skillfully weave a picture of a destroyed simplicity of life, of a profound sadness, and of the extent to which the United States Government was just outright wrong.

Many military personal that worked in Bagram prison in Afghanistan, where Dilawar was taken, and Guantanamo Bay, are interviewed in or surrounded by black shadows. The shadows are an important visual reminder of the moral confusion surrounding their position along the spectrum of responsibility. Are they guilty for following orders? Are they guilty for reproducing the brutality they were surrounded by and encouraged to do? Most of their comments seem to be answering questions regarding their own involvement in the humiliation and torture of prisoners in a context of Gibney’s central question: who is to blame?

Accusations move from resentment towards direct superiors (“we were told they were less than dogs” and “they wanted these people to be guilty”) to self-blame (should have gone with my own morality”) to anger at being manipulated and used by the administration. The brilliance of these interviews is that they capture their dissonance –the betrayal, coupled with shame, these soldiers feel. It is enough of an internal discord to incriminate the very institution they served and suffered for.

With these interviews, it becomes clear that Gibney wants to show that the leaders of the United States government did not just justify torture, death, war, murder, and human brutality that was occurring, they worked to create it and then let their own take the fall.

With this film, Gibney makes it compulsory that all of America can no longer deny it. “This is what we did.”