A Cinephile’s Critiques

Produced by Adam Curtis, 2005 (B&W and Color, 4:3, Mono, 3×60′)
Featuring various bureaucrats, intelligence analysts, journalists, military advisers, philosophers, and political advisers

The Power of Nightmares documents the history of neo-conservative politics and Islamic fundamentalism, from these movements’ philosophical beginnings in the ’50s and ’60s, to their followers’ current positions as influential, if unpopular, demagogues, who may, very well, have created power for themselves through the use of distortion and fear.

Adam Curtis begins his story by telling us that, in the past, politicians’ power came from the dreams they offered us, but, faced with a disenchanted population, they came to rely, instead, on promises to protect us from nightmares. Curtis’ well-reasoned, three-hour essay makes a convincing argument that those nightmares may be no more real than the dreams they couldn’t deliver previously.

Nightmares weaves a montage of narrated film and music clips with interviews of credible sources of information. The film and music sometimes add an ironic spin to the narrator’s calm and authoritative description of the ideas and events that led to the War on Terror.

Ideas play a central role in this history of events, and Nightmares begins with two relatively minor philosophers, Sayyid Qutb, in the Middle East, and Leo Strauss, in the West, who both believed that the tolerance and freedom of Western society had led to social disorder and decay. Qutb became convinced that the West was creating a world-wide culture of selfish, immoral people, while Strauss theorized that individualism and nihilism threatened the stability of Western society.

Qutb’s adherents, the Islamic fundamentalists, decided that the way to shock Muslims out of their moral corruption was by killing Arab politicians and, eventually, Arabic citizens, until the populace realized that Muslim states were the only way to create a pure, Islamic, society.

Meanwhile, Strauss’ followers, the American neo-conservatives, created a Platonic myth of America as a bastion of good which must battle the forces of evil in the world. They allied themselves with the Republican party and fundamentalist Christians, not because they believed in either of their philosophies, but because they offered them a means to spread their vision of a heroic fight between good and evil which would galvanize the West and reverse its decay.

Curtis describes both of these political movements as destructive, self-deluding forces which fell out of favor, after their hey-day in the 80s and early 90s, until the horrifying attack on New York City provided them with a means to re-assert their philosophies.

Nightmares sees al-Qaeda as a phantom threat which poses little more danger to society than any of the other isolated terrorist groups which have intermittently attacked people throughout the late 20th century, and it paints the Bush and Blair administrations’ reactions to the terrorist attacks as extreme and paranoid. This may startle people who have relied on mainstream journalism for their information on the War on Terror, but Nightmares’ argument is credible, well-reasoned, and worthy of consideration.