When ISIS took the Syrian town of Raqqa in 2014, the first thing it did was suppress the media. I want to reflect upon that. This is one of the key pillars of a police state — any police state. The Nazis didn’t exactly advertise they were exterminating all the Jews during WWII. And for all my, “it can’t happen here” friends, what do you think the repeated cries of “FAKE NEWS” are intended to yield? A poll I read last week said 90% of Trump voters –people who should know best what a consummate liar he is—believe Donnie Dumbo over CNN. Oh, you sad, sad people. I’d feel sorry for you if this weren’t such a danger to our society.
For now, however, City of Ghosts is a documentary about Raqqa, not Topeka. Specifically, City of Ghosts follows the bravery of Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, a small group of subversives trying to Raqqa the boat by sneaking genuine ISIS video reality to the internet. [I thought of “Raqqa the Casbah,” but decided against] These are, quite seriously, the greatest acts of courage going on today. We know this because thanks to RBSS, we now have video of what ISIS does to enemies – public executions and heads on spikes. How would you like that job, huh? It’s one thing to pull the cowardly act of masked execution by gun fire. If you never have to face your enemy and you’re dressed in a Halloween costume, you can distance yourself from the action, but how about the guy whose job it is to take a severed head and plunge it onto a spiked railing above eye height? What kind of callous enemy dehumanizing training [read: brain washing] do you have to go through to do that? To order that?
Intermingled with the horrors of war are the members of RBSS, who mostly hang out these days in Turkey or Germany fearing for their lives. The movie names them, but I shan’t. For one thing, these fellows are neither fully listed on the imdb page or on the film’s official website (or weren’t at last check). For another, it’s fairly unlikely they were giving their real names on film. I don’t blame them. You don’t want to be BFFs (Best Foes Forever!) with ISIS. It is understood that (for the lack of actual names) Leonardo, Donatello, and Rafael here have fought their personal wars to save Raqqa and now mostly collect and distribute reports from unnamed heroes still living within city walls. Turns out when Donatello isn’t hanging out in his undisclosed Turkish apartment, he dreams of being married. Awww, isn’t that sweet? He’s like Anna from Frozen, that is if you can imagine Elsa as a bitter, masked, heavily armed source of terror Hell-bent on murdering her.
Ironically, the first scenes of City of Ghosts capture the pre-ISIS dissatisfaction and street protests for President Assad’s despotism. I suppose this is a classic case of “be careful what you ask for,” huh? Which, of course, describes the rise of ISIS in the first place – we Americans hated Saddam Hussein. We did something about it. All else being equal, the
world is a better place without him. However, all else is not equal and if Saddam still rules Iraq today, it’s hard to imagine the current existence of ISIS. I suppose every culture has a “be careful what you wish for” set of morality tales. The important part is to learn from them, which Americans never seem to do.
City of Ghosts is less a movie than a tribute to pure courage. It is unfortunately limited in what it can do and what it represents. Along these lines, this is very close to the most male-dominated film I’ve seen in the past decade. I don’t blame the film for its faults; you can only show what you can freely collect. And you just know anyone in City of Ghosts not wearing a black mask is currently living on borrowed time. From a pure filmmaking point of view, I can’t say this is great work – it’s characters are far from full, the story is incomplete, and the most powerful scenes in the film have been clipped. But from a human point of view, City of Ghosts is absolute genius; I hope every single person in the world gets to see this film.
There once was a town of great fear
Where thugs bullied all who lived near
Said full of ghosts
Confirmed by the hosts
If you film them, you’ll soon disappear
Rated R, 92 Minutes
D: Matthew Heineman
W: (none)
Genre: Reality. Harsh reality.
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Those who long for peace
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: ISIS
