Torture Documentaries and Taxi to the Dark Side (Alex Gibney, 2007)

Abstract

Documentary film’s images of torture bear an affective charge enhanced by the genre’s ‘representation of reality’ (Nichols, 1991). In this way, Taxi to the Dark Side (Alex Gibney, 2007) uses the documented homicide of an Afghan taxi driver in Bagram prison as the focus for interviewing Bagram prison guards and interrogators, as well as for investigating US government policy and the legal and social/psychological issues around torture. The film incorporates dramatic re-enactments and many still images taken by photojournalists on the political or war beat in conjunction with a detective story structure. The narrative investigates the story of one man’s homicide in Bagram Prison by tracing ever-widening circles of cause and effect until it arrives at the larger crime of US government-sponsored torture. This essay examines the film’s visual style, its use of witnesses, the kind of data we have gathered on torture, and the limits of that data. As the news or political leaders proffer brief narratives about torture, the public discussion of the issue too often conveys a deceptive temporal finitude and assurance. In contrast, documentaries, scholarship, and Internet archives have created an expanding archive related to this crucial social issue, constantly reinterpreting events and culpability, and feeding into anti-torture activism in essential ways.