In the mood for a history lesson about a man that surprisingly few people of our generation know all that much about? Search no further than "The Trials of Henry Kissinger," playing now at Madstone Theaters alongside "Bowling for Columbine." Henry Kissinger, who served under several different presidential administrations, has just been thrust back into the political spotlight thanks to George W. Bush. But this movie deals primarily with his past and some of the questionable acts that he has potential ties to, barely mentioning his probably too-recent connections to the newest administration.
Kissinger is celebrated as one of the most brilliant political minds to emerge within the last generation. The focus of this film, which is inspired by a book of the same title by Christopher Hitchens, is the dual nature of the man.
Kissinger has been alleged by more than one source to be a war criminal, wanted by several nations' courts for crimes against humanity. This is the same man who, in 1973, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.
Charges that Kissinger was instrumental in creating the coup that toppled Chilean President Allende, that he undermined Lyndon B. Johnson's Vietnam peace talks -- ultimately prolonging the Vietnam war by seven years -- engineered the secret bombing of Cambodia and the cover-up that followed and approved Indonesian president Suharto's use of U.S. arms to massacre 100,000 East Timorese are all components of the crimes that have resulted in summonses by five nations seeking to depose him.
The movie is compelling in that it does not take one side or another. The filmmakers simply lay down the facts, interview some of Kissinger's former aides as well as some of his detractors and let the audience decide for themselves how they feel about Kissinger.
The film's nature is problematic. The movie is a documentary and therefore comes across as a little stale. It lacks the commentary of Michael Moore, which is one of the reasons that "Bowling For Columbine" has been so popular. To get closer to an uncomfortable subject, Moore presented the extremes of a situation, in at attempt to get the audience to half-heartedly laugh at things that people would not ordinarily laugh at. In "The Trials of Henry Kissinger," no such attempts are made. The filmmakers present their facts with dry authority and the movie comes across about as exciting as reading a history textbook. Both documentaries have some disturbing scenes, particularly the war footage pertaining to Vietnam.
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Still, all of these aspects do not add up to a bad film or a disinteresting one. They are simply parts of the lesson that one should expect when they go to see a documentary. All things considered, "The Trials of Henry Kissinger" is a compelling film that will teach the people who choose to seek it out quite a bit that they might not have known before the viewing.
With Kissinger's renewed prominence in our government, the movie's importance and relevance is immediate.
