(Michael Winterbottom, Mat Whitecross, UK, 95 mins)
While watching The Road to Guantánamo, it occurred to me that important films are rarely fun, while fun films are rarely important.
United 93 is an important film. Though exciting--in the action-adventure sense of the word--the 2006 docudrama isn't much fun. Had director Paul Greengrass imbued it with even a shred of fun, he'd have faced major derision, so it's understandable that he would resist the impulse. The result is a film that feels a bit like eating your "veg," to quote Wallace & Gromit. Salon's Andrew O'Hehir prefers the phrase "spinach cinema."
All of this is to say that The Road to Guantánamo is even more relentless than Alan Parker's 1978 Midnight Express, but without that director's flights of fancy to lighten the load. No, it's just torture, torture, torture. Granted, that's probably exactly what it was like for these young British Muslims, shipped to Cuba's Guantánamo Bay, while en route to a wedding in Pakistan.
As a filmgoer, unfortunately, I found it a slog. Where's John Hurt when you need him? Or Steve Coogan, star of Winterbottom's gleefully irreverent 24 Hour Party People and Tristram Shandy? Seriously, Winterbottom, who trod similar ground with the superior 2002 feature In This World, and Whitecross, his former assistant director, have done an admirable job at blending real-life interviews with re-creations in tracing the Kafka-esque journey travelled by this intrepid trio, but not until the cathartic final frame could I honestly say I enjoyed the film or found it the least bit "fun." I realize that's a lot to ask and it's not that I don't like spinach--I prefer it with a little more sauce.
9/28/26 postscript: In retrospect, I wish I had said something, anything, about Riz Ahmed. He's quite good in this film, and in every film I've seen him in since. I'm glad he's found the stardom he so richly deserves.
Egyptian: 6/8 at 7:15pm and Pacific Place: 6/11 at 1:15pm.
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