The subject matter avoids Saddam's rise to power, which was covered quite well by Frontline. The focus instead is on Saddam "the man", his family, his wealth, and his megalomania in general. The images of Saddam's palaces, museums and other shrines juxtapose chillingly with those of children in hospitals and Saddam's torture victims. We also see how Saddam has turned his presidency into a virtual monarchy, (rather than a Hitler-style dictatorship) complete with royal family intrigue as family members come into and lose -- sometimes painfully -- power and influence within the regime. The tongue in cheek narration gives this documentary a strange feel, more sarcastic than ironic, which I am not sure was the best way to present this material. Saddam will no doubt receive his wish and be remembered throughout history (alongside similar monsters like Nero, Pol Pot, Stalin, Catherine di Medici and others).
7 Reviews
Intriguing
ryanpatrickmiller12 September 2005
This movie is very interesting. I do feel that most dictators are very "quirky" and even the American President does have "bunkers of sorts" I do think it is interesting to learn about him and the cultures. The cleaning issues are a very personal thing. Look at Howard Hughes or Sienfeild for that matter. Over all a good watch, but just like Bowling for columbine, And Farenheit 911 you have to take these as mostly opinion biased. The movie unfortunately has that obnoxious feel of a college film because of the stock footage and very aged. This gives it a very good feel, but does not mix with the things he shot on DV very well. All in all i'd have to give it an 8, it's good, i like it, i'd like to own it, but I won't be swallowing this information whole.
Brilliant blast of the Butcherous b****rd of Baghdad
stevetseitz17 July 2003
I cannot recommend this documentary enough. Anyone who has doubts about Operation Iraqi Freedom should try and view this film if only to see Saddam Hussein in his element. You begin to understand the meglomania and psychosis of this ruthless tyrant.
Particularly eye-opening are the opulent lifestyle and architectural and artistic excesses of this man who built billions of dollars worth of palaces for himself and his close followers and let his people suffer and die.
His systematic placement and subsequent elimination of family members in places of power is a symptom of his paranoid delusion and cheek of his murderous schemes would astonish medieval king.
It becomes clear that the Baathist/marxist policies of Saddam do nothing to elevate the lives of the average Iraqi and merely spread the misery equally among anyone outside Saddam's circle of influence in Iraq.
Particularly weird are Saddam's discourse on body odor and bathing.
Particularly eye-opening are the opulent lifestyle and architectural and artistic excesses of this man who built billions of dollars worth of palaces for himself and his close followers and let his people suffer and die.
His systematic placement and subsequent elimination of family members in places of power is a symptom of his paranoid delusion and cheek of his murderous schemes would astonish medieval king.
It becomes clear that the Baathist/marxist policies of Saddam do nothing to elevate the lives of the average Iraqi and merely spread the misery equally among anyone outside Saddam's circle of influence in Iraq.
Particularly weird are Saddam's discourse on body odor and bathing.
Report from an era that is no more.
stevewest-127 August 2005
Uncle Saddam (just called "Saddam" here) gives a feel for what it was like to be around the man and what sort of a man this Saddam Hussein was, what he did inside the unfair system of dictatorship with checks and balances absent. This documentary doesn't concentrate a lot on events and history, more on people and places.
Saddam seems to be more of a small-time dictator as his country had only 20 million people and the economy wasn't in terribly good shape (I hope it doesn't sound too political to mention the embargoes). The gassing of the Kurds happened in a region under the administration of an ex-taxi driver cousin of Saddam's, who earned the nickname of "Chemical Ali" for his fascination with chemical warfare.
Saddam comes across as more of a friendly but highly negligent uncle to his people, at least he acknowledged questions as to why he was building a multi-million dollar resort town in the middle of the desert when the money could be better spent on food and hospitals (although he gave a b_llshit answer).
What surprised me the most was the amount of enemies he had put under house arrest when he could have easily done as other dictators do and have them killed. Perhaps he just wasn't that bothered by former members of his inner circle saying bad things about him internationally.
I think Saddam's greatest crime was putting himself before his country, I think he enjoyed the perks of being dictator too much and did his country and his people a lot of harm (although it seems in the early days he was fairly active in improving the country).
In a post-2003 sense the documentary argues a good case as to the pointlessness of starting the Iraq War just to remove this individual. It seems like a pretty steep price to pay. I do wonder what happened to all those interesting (and expensive) buildings Saddam had his architect design and build, are they all rubble or are they in use by the US army or journalists today?
Saddam seems to be more of a small-time dictator as his country had only 20 million people and the economy wasn't in terribly good shape (I hope it doesn't sound too political to mention the embargoes). The gassing of the Kurds happened in a region under the administration of an ex-taxi driver cousin of Saddam's, who earned the nickname of "Chemical Ali" for his fascination with chemical warfare.
Saddam comes across as more of a friendly but highly negligent uncle to his people, at least he acknowledged questions as to why he was building a multi-million dollar resort town in the middle of the desert when the money could be better spent on food and hospitals (although he gave a b_llshit answer).
What surprised me the most was the amount of enemies he had put under house arrest when he could have easily done as other dictators do and have them killed. Perhaps he just wasn't that bothered by former members of his inner circle saying bad things about him internationally.
I think Saddam's greatest crime was putting himself before his country, I think he enjoyed the perks of being dictator too much and did his country and his people a lot of harm (although it seems in the early days he was fairly active in improving the country).
In a post-2003 sense the documentary argues a good case as to the pointlessness of starting the Iraq War just to remove this individual. It seems like a pretty steep price to pay. I do wonder what happened to all those interesting (and expensive) buildings Saddam had his architect design and build, are they all rubble or are they in use by the US army or journalists today?
A surreal glimpse at this narcissistic and eccentric dictator.
werhymes7 April 2003
Warning: Spoilers
This documentary is a very compelling and surreal glimpse at the narcissistic and eccentric (former) dictator of Iraq. The movie has a narrow scope. If you watch with an expectation that you will come away with a better understanding of the Iraqi people and their plight, you will be somewhat disappointed. It simply tries to convey the unbridled ego, callous brutality, and campy, over-the-top style around which this sadistic tyrants world revolves.
It shows, in part, what can happen when you couple paranoia and absence of personal and financial limits. My mouth was left hanging open through most of the film. I am not going to give any spoilers but the `art' museum and its curator is unbelievable. And describing his family as dysfunctional is the epitome of understatement. It is like crossing the Manson family, Deliverance, and Julius Caesar and adding a healthy dose of crystal meth.
It is amazing that the director got the footage he did considering the lengths he went to get what he got. I wish there were more but in some regard I am not certain I could have taken more in one sitting.
This is a must see. Evidence that this kind of evil must not be allowed to exist. It would be funny if it were not so horribly true.
It shows, in part, what can happen when you couple paranoia and absence of personal and financial limits. My mouth was left hanging open through most of the film. I am not going to give any spoilers but the `art' museum and its curator is unbelievable. And describing his family as dysfunctional is the epitome of understatement. It is like crossing the Manson family, Deliverance, and Julius Caesar and adding a healthy dose of crystal meth.
It is amazing that the director got the footage he did considering the lengths he went to get what he got. I wish there were more but in some regard I am not certain I could have taken more in one sitting.
This is a must see. Evidence that this kind of evil must not be allowed to exist. It would be funny if it were not so horribly true.
it was quite good
stewieisagod-17 September 2005
Saddam, (Which is the Australian title) was quite a good insight into this psychopath and his rule.It didn't make rethink my opposition to the Iraq war but rather, why the hell did the West support this guy in the first place.
The director has done a good job at letting us see how Saddam ran the country into the ground but fails mention how he got the money and the weapons which he used in his atrocities. But then again that isn't the point of the movie.
For those who think Bush is a freedom loving person either don't know or care that he is overlooking similar human rights violations occur in Uzebekistan as it has become an ally in the War on terror.
The director has done a good job at letting us see how Saddam ran the country into the ground but fails mention how he got the money and the weapons which he used in his atrocities. But then again that isn't the point of the movie.
For those who think Bush is a freedom loving person either don't know or care that he is overlooking similar human rights violations occur in Uzebekistan as it has become an ally in the War on terror.
The film fits the man... (SPOILERS!)
zardoz1230 April 2003
Warning: Spoilers
...a glitter-trash documentary about the hick who became Iraq's dictator/living god, "Uncle Saddam" (what the childern of his flunkies call him) focuses on the opulent lifestyle of the title subject, who resembles a cross between the world's worst Stalin impersonator and a "Miami Vice" Columbian drug cartel leader. Joel Soler told the Iraqi government that he was there to film how the economic sanctions were killing Iraqi children; instead he interviewed the head of the Saddam art museum, talked with Hussein's architect, filmed models of the gigantic mosque (larger than the one in Mecca) the dictator was building, and collected film of Saddam's extended family, along with footage of torture victims and executions. The dying children of the sanctions and "no-fly zone" bombing are shown, but only in a short montage with some schmaltzy music in the background, and over the end credits.
In a style reminicent of a cheap infomercial, "Uncle Saddam" recounts Saddam's crummy upbringing in Tikrit, where he was the fatherless son of a shepherding clan. Through guile he forced the family to pay for his education, where he became a lawyer, attempted assasinations on the Iraqi leadership, fled to Egypt, but later returned. He became the security man of the Ba'th Arab Socialist Party, and used his position to wrest control of the country from the Ba'th leader when that party came to power in the late 1970's. From then on, blood ran like water as Iraq invaded Iran in 1979, whose Shi'ite fundamentalists had just overthrown the Shah (not mentioned in the film.) Also not mentioned is how every weapons-producing state sold Saddam arms in order to fight Iran, then seen as a threat to the world's oil supply. Like all oil-producing non-democracies, Hussein's government quckly became rife with nepotism, as all of his close relatives became heads of various government offices. As the Iran-Iraq war drew to a close in the late 1980's, an inter-family blood feud began to see who would succeed Saddam. Most of his close relatives wound up dead or crippled by Iraq's secret police. By the time of the first Gulf War, Iraq no longer looked like a Nassarite state; instead it had become a cross between a faux kingdom and the USSR in the late 1930's, with massive palaces for the leadership and grotesque statues or mosaics of Hussein everywhere. The disaster that was the US-Iraq war fell heavily on the shoulders of Iraq's people, but the sanctions actually helped Saddam's grip over the people (something also not discussed in the film) by forcing them to either support the regime or starve, because the Iraq government was collaborating with the "Oil for Food" program. Meanwhile, Hussein lived like the Saudi royalty, and developed Howard Hughes-like habits (fear of microbes, baths twice a day), and a fetish for security (Saddam doubles, underground bunkers.)
Now that Hussein is gone, a film like "Uncle Saddam" makes for a good "I told you so" by American war supporters to those who opposed it, but both the war supporters and the film-maker forget one thing: Iraq is an artificial state, cut out of the Ottoman Empire by the British after WWI. It has never been held together except by monarchy or dictatorship, and Achmad Chalabi (whose uncle, I think, was interviewed by Soler) who has been living in London for twenty years and is wanted in Jordan for a bank scam, probably will not cut it as "president." Like Yugoslavia, Iraq will probably partition into seperate enclaves of Sunni, Shi'ite, and Kurdish peoples, leaving only the bricks stamped with Saddam's name and this film depicting those bricks as testament to that entity once known as Iraq.
In a style reminicent of a cheap infomercial, "Uncle Saddam" recounts Saddam's crummy upbringing in Tikrit, where he was the fatherless son of a shepherding clan. Through guile he forced the family to pay for his education, where he became a lawyer, attempted assasinations on the Iraqi leadership, fled to Egypt, but later returned. He became the security man of the Ba'th Arab Socialist Party, and used his position to wrest control of the country from the Ba'th leader when that party came to power in the late 1970's. From then on, blood ran like water as Iraq invaded Iran in 1979, whose Shi'ite fundamentalists had just overthrown the Shah (not mentioned in the film.) Also not mentioned is how every weapons-producing state sold Saddam arms in order to fight Iran, then seen as a threat to the world's oil supply. Like all oil-producing non-democracies, Hussein's government quckly became rife with nepotism, as all of his close relatives became heads of various government offices. As the Iran-Iraq war drew to a close in the late 1980's, an inter-family blood feud began to see who would succeed Saddam. Most of his close relatives wound up dead or crippled by Iraq's secret police. By the time of the first Gulf War, Iraq no longer looked like a Nassarite state; instead it had become a cross between a faux kingdom and the USSR in the late 1930's, with massive palaces for the leadership and grotesque statues or mosaics of Hussein everywhere. The disaster that was the US-Iraq war fell heavily on the shoulders of Iraq's people, but the sanctions actually helped Saddam's grip over the people (something also not discussed in the film) by forcing them to either support the regime or starve, because the Iraq government was collaborating with the "Oil for Food" program. Meanwhile, Hussein lived like the Saudi royalty, and developed Howard Hughes-like habits (fear of microbes, baths twice a day), and a fetish for security (Saddam doubles, underground bunkers.)
Now that Hussein is gone, a film like "Uncle Saddam" makes for a good "I told you so" by American war supporters to those who opposed it, but both the war supporters and the film-maker forget one thing: Iraq is an artificial state, cut out of the Ottoman Empire by the British after WWI. It has never been held together except by monarchy or dictatorship, and Achmad Chalabi (whose uncle, I think, was interviewed by Soler) who has been living in London for twenty years and is wanted in Jordan for a bank scam, probably will not cut it as "president." Like Yugoslavia, Iraq will probably partition into seperate enclaves of Sunni, Shi'ite, and Kurdish peoples, leaving only the bricks stamped with Saddam's name and this film depicting those bricks as testament to that entity once known as Iraq.
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