The Square

    So this week we watched The Square which is a very new documentary (A Netflix Original in fact) that has been nominated for the Best Documentary of 2014. For those of you who don't know, it is the story of the Egyptian Revolution, which largely takes place around the Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt and follows the story of people who call themselves revolutionaries while at the same time differentiating themselves from the Islamic Brotherhood.

     By pure coincidence, Hannah and I watched this on the 3 year anniversary of the start of the revolution on January 25th, 2011. After seeing this film, I was left with two thoughts.  First, it was sad to see the disharmony of the Egyptian people. At the start of the documentary, Egypt had been under what was essentially a totalitarian rule for 30 years and the youth of Egypt started to hold protests. As the protests grew in power and numbers the Islamic Brotherhood (according to the people featured in the documentary) began to latch on to this movement as a way to gain political power of their own. Eventually an election was held and Dr. Mohammed Morsy (reportedly a Muslim Brotherhood lapdog) was elected president by a margin of 52%.  The Revolutionaries (who, again, were very careful to differentiate themselves from the Muslim Brotherhood) were displeased but said they would give him a year to make changes. Almost exactly a year later those revolutionaries again began protesting, saying that since they could not defeat him in elections, this was the only way to remove him from power. The military, after two days of protesting by reportedly "Millions" of people, then ousted Morsy and put him under house arrest. This angered the Islamic Brotherhood who then organized their own protests. After these protests continued for a month, the military controlled government moved in and killed hundreds of protesters as they broke up the "sit ins".

There is a very emotional scene in the documentary where a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the original revolutionaries, is speaking with a non brotherhood revolutionary over the phone saying that this is never what they had intended for their revolution. In my opinion, this is the only redeeming scene of the film. It was very sad to me to see the the disunity of the Egyptian people, how one group could care less about the needs, beliefs and feelings of another group. It is sad to me that the people of Egypt felt that a coup was the only way to get rid of an elected official. Is there no way of recalling the President or otherwise removing him from office?

     My second thought about this documentary was that it was very one sided and therefore it was extremely difficult to determine some balance of what the truth might be. As you watch, it is extremely hard to follow along with what is occurring because there is no narration other than the revolutionaries explaining their actions. At one point, the protagonist was either shot or hit with a rock. We see his head bleeding and several doctors gathered around him and frantic and confused Arabic being translated, "Is he dying!? Was he shot? Was it a rock?" This is never again mentioned in the film. The film is full of anecdotes like this where it is impossible to determine what is actual truth because it is all essentially hearsay.  This troubles me mainly because this documentary was nominated for an Academy Award and I would hope that our standards for documentaries would be high enough that we might actually might learn something factual when we see them. Now, what I will say for this film is that it was very beautifully filmed. We see excellent footage of the raw scenes of fighting which is interspersed with film that clearly shows the devotion that the revolutionaries feel for their country and their compatriots.  In this sense, the film is quite moving.
    Over all, I would recommend this documentary only if you already are familiar with the turmoil in Egypt and would like to see the man on the ground perspective or if you are interested in the films nominated for the Academy Awards, just don't expect to learn very much actual fact.