One can argue that a society shouldn't torture even its most committed enemies; or that torture is wrong because you might inflict it on the innocent. But one thing that is certain is that torture is a very bad way of finding out the truth: the guilty may confess, but the innocent will do so too, just to get the torture to end. Yet, in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2021 and the subsequent wars, the U. S. government rounded up those it suspected of involvement, imprisoned them without trial, and subjected them to torture. Kevin Macdonald's film 'The Mauritanian' tells the story of one such victim. At first the film is hard to get into: it raises the possibility of the suspect's guilt (a possibility it does not so much allay as subsequently ignore) and saves the story of his torture to the end; the tale of that torture is then told impressionistically, rather than as a precise claim of exactly what was done. Also, a man languishes in gaol for 14 years: where's the plot in that? But the essential truth of how people were treated has been very well established, and the film does us an important service by bringing this to a wider audience. If civilised people are defined by how we treat our enemies, the story is a major fail for the west.
Review of The Mauritanian
