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WAR MADE EASY: HOW PRESIDENTS AND PUNDITS KEEP SPINNING US TO DEATH
Written & Directed by Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp, based on the book by Norman Soloman
Produced by Alper
Camera, David Rabinovitz
Edited by Andrew Killoy
Music by John Van Eps & Leigh Philips
Released by Media Education Foundation/Disinformation Company
USA. 72 min. Not Rated
Narrated by Sean Penn

Despite the saturation of documentaries on Iraq, they just keep coming. No one seems to be provoked into a deeper understanding of our body politic. Instead, the films preach to the converted. War Made Easy, however, left me talking about presidential rhetoric and the media’s patriotic paralysis during wartime. Briefly, it is a persuasive and engaging film.

The majority of war documentaries seem overwhelmed by the subject matter and the limitations of the medium. Many have a tendency to wander onto tangents and to become so expansive that the central thesis becomes somehow muddied by an overabundance of information. This film has a very clear point of view and sticks to it. It takes an efficient look at how the rhetoric of war by policy makers and bureaucrats, who withhold the real reasons for war and its cost, garner public support and coerce the media into complacency. The film primarily focuses on the cable news channels’ coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially Fox News.

The thesis is so much a part of the film’s construction that it closely resembles an essay, never straying from its focus, and slowly constructing a well-supported argument. There are no talking-heads interviews or counter-points. Author Norman Solomon essentially walks the viewer through the argument he makes in his book on the subject, not coincidentally of the same name. Throughout, editor Andrew Killoy has assembled a wonderful collage of stock footage from media coverage of various wars to military footage, expertly adding to the potency of Solomon’s message. The result is one of the clearest and most effective films on the Iraq War to date, and an enlightening analysis of the ways in which war has been sold to America since Vietnam. Dustin L. Nelson
March 14, 2008