Taxi to the Dark Side (2007)

A year from now, the presidency of George W. Bush will end, but the consequences of Mr. Bush’s policies and the arguments about them are likely to be with us for a long time. As next Jan. 20 draws near, there is an evident temptation, among many journalists as well as politicians seeking to replace Mr. Bush, to close the book and move ahead, an impulse that makes the existence of documentaries like Alex Gibney’s “Taxi to the Dark Side” all the more vital. If recent American history is ever going to be discussed with the necessary clarity and ethical rigor, this film will be essential.

Mr. Gibney directed “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” and was an executive producer of Charles Ferguson’s “No End in Sight,” films that show the same combination of investigative thoroughness and moral indignation that animates “Taxi.” The germ of this documentary’s story is the case of Dilawar, a taxi driver who was detained in Afghanistan in 2002 and who died in American custody at the prison in Bagram a few months later. Though Dilawar was never charged with any crime — and was never shown to have any connection with Al Qaeda or the Taliban — he was subjected to horrifically harsh treatment: deprived of sleep; suspended from a grated ceiling by his wrists; kicked and kneed in the legs until he could no longer stand.

The film includes remarkably frank interviews with American servicemen, some of whom faced courts-martial in connection with Dilawar’s death; with a fellow prisoner at Bagram; and with Carlotta Gall and Tim Golden, who reported on Dilawar’s story for The New York Times. “Taxi to the Dark Side,” however, does not simply recount a single, awful anecdote from the early days of the war on terror; rather, it traces the spread of a central, controversial tactic in that war. The burden of Mr. Gibney’s argument, laid out soberly and in daunting detail, is that what happened to Dilawar was not anomalous, but rather represented an early instance of what would soon be a widespread policy.



From Bagram in 2002, “Taxi to the Dark Side” charts a path to Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, all the while insisting that the brutal treatment of prisoners in those places was hardly the work of a few “bad apples,” as Pentagon officials said. Instead, the sexual humiliation, waterboarding and other well-documented practices were methods sanctioned at the very top of the chain of command. How those methods were intended to work — to break down psychological defenses, to induce not only physical discomfort but also a kind of madness — is laid out in interviews with behavioral scientists, and also with professional interrogators and their victims.



Though Mr. Gibney’s own views are evident throughout, he does allow those who defend the use of torture on legal and strategic grounds to have their say. By now, surely, the empty semantic debate about the appropriateness of the word torture has been settled, but it is still important to recall that in the months after the 9/11 attacks, the willingness to consider the necessity of extreme and previously taboo tactics was widespread. It was Vice President Dick Cheney who noted in a television interview that the fight against Islamic extremism would necessitate a trip to “the dark side,” as administration lawyers prepared (and later publicly defended) briefs and memos limiting habeas corpus and the applicability of the Geneva Conventions.



“Taxi to the Dark Side” includes an interview with the former Justice Department official John Yoo and clips of former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales responding to their critics. And its essential fair-mindedness (which is not the same as neutrality) strengthens the film’s accounting of the consequences, both strategic and moral.



Jack Clooney, a longtime F.B.I. interrogator, argues that kindness can be a more effective way to manipulate a prisoner and gain information than cruelty, while young men who worked at Bagram and Abu Ghraib testify to the atmosphere of sadism in those places. Their matter-of-fact tone provides, in some ways, the most powerful support for Mr. Gibney’s view of the corrosive effects of torture on American traditions of decency and the rule of law.



His film is long, detailed and not always easy to watch. Plenty of moviegoers would happily pay not to think about the issues raised in “Taxi to the Dark Side.” But sooner or later we will need to understand what has happened in this country in the last seven years, and this documentary will be essential to that effort.



“Taxi to the Dark Side” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian) for disturbing images and content involving torture and graphic nudity.


TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE


Opens on Friday in New York and Los Angeles.

Written, directed and narrated by Alex Gibney; directors of photography, Maryse Alberti and Greg Andracke; edited by Sloane Klevin; music by Ivor Guest and Robert Logan; produced by Mr. Gibney, Eva Orner and Susannah Shipman; released by ThinkFilm. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes.