Customer Reviews

Uncle Saddam [VHS]

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I laughed all through the first half of this movie. It's not often we westerners get to see a medieval despot in action, and Saddam would have been right at home in the Middle Ages. Here's a guy who demands that his subjects kiss him on each armpit; who has Iraq's major newspapers run a front page photo of him every day of the week; who's favorite sport is fishing-with hand grenades(!); who allocates much of Iraq's limited wealth to build monuments to himself. I found myself not hating Saddam so much as I wanted to put him on display as a kind of curiosity, like in the Ripley museum.

The second half was much more sobering, focusing mainly on who was killing who to get ahead in the regime. All in all, you really have to admire the filmmaker (a Frenchman-Gasp!), who risked his life for the sake of ridiculing one of the most dangerous people on Earth. And for the record, I'm against the war, but that doesn't mean I don't think somebody needs to plug the S.O.B.

Undoubtedly the strangest documentary I've ever seen, the footage of Saddam is more like watching a comedian do a "dictator skit" in the manner of Charlie Chaplin's Hitler, than an actual human being. In an array of ill-fitting hats, we see Saddam at rest, at play, and having lots of fun dancing. He looks totally insane, and most likely on some serious "medication". It also goes through the family tree, some of whom we are familiar with because they have graced the famous "deck of cards". Son Uday obviously either had the same genetic madness, and/or the same chemist.

French filmmaker Joel Soler risked his life to get this footage. Using the subterfuge of making a documentary on Iraqi architecture, he gained rare access into many areas not normally shown to anyone with a camera. We do get to see the many astounding, grandiose palaces, which he contrasts with the filthy conditions in the Children's Hospital, where the flies are fat, and the children skeletal.
One of the more bizarre sections is the "Saddam Art Center", which contains nothing but wall-to-wall portraits of the Evil Madman, and all the tours are led by glassy-eyed fawning subjects, full of praise for their fearless leader, and who would dutifully kiss him in his preferred spot, his armpits, which brings about Saddam's lecture on hygiene and body odors. One has to wonder how anyone retained their sanity surviving decades of this man's iron-fisted rule, and how those born under it, who have known nothing else, can learn to live in the real world.

Interspersed throughout are flashes of the true horror behind this veil of Saddam's happy Iraq, and commentary by exiled Iraqis of their experiences.
The musical choices for the soundtrack are excellent, and if you like Arabic music as I do, you'll find the score enjoyable.
This is a riveting documentary, totally unique in its presentation. A true-life black comedy, and a rare piece of filmmaking. Total running time is approximately 63 minutes.

Not only is Saddam a poison gas wielding monument building mass murdering dictator, he's a clean freak with a hat for every occasion. Good stuff.

This documentary was aired in november on cinemax probally 3 times. What a shame. Every american, no matter what thier stance with iraq, should watch this. It totally changed my mind. It is a complete documentary of the man. It is a shame that men had to die in order for this to be made. That's right: people died in order for you to be able to see it. I won't tell you what my stance is, and the reason why is that you owe it to yourself to find out how you feel given this rare glance into his world. I've read 3 biographies of the man over the years, and this is a good documentary.

I repeat, to the naysayers:

While attempting and succeeding to sound smart your review is rubbish. For on thing, this film wasn't supposed to be a documentary per se, it's a French guy who went to Iraq with the pretense of showing what sanctions had been doing to Iraq, only to solidify in his mind that there was plenty of money to go around and the more that Iraqi people suffered, the more Saddam's regime gained sympathy, and it almost worked. You didn't like the film because it didn't make the West look bad. You cite opinions from liberal news sources who want to blame the USA for Saddam and his chemical weapons. The fact is, it was European companies, to include Sweden, who supplied Iraq with said materials not the US govt. Joel Soler could have been far harsher in Saddam but wasn't. Listen to his interview at the end of the DVD, he is lucky he wasn't killed. But yes, there are other things he forgot to mention (because they hadn't happened yet) like the fact that the UN, which he claims is a great organization, was being bribed by Saddam, more specifically, bribes were being taken by countries that all of a sudden reneged on their word to Powell that they would go along with enforcing the umpteen billionth resolution. As stated before, thousands if not millions of Iraqis died because of the UN sanctions. Duelfer's report clearly stated Saddam had every intention of gathering world sympathy to get the sanctions lifted and once they were he planned on building back up his arsenal, to include nuclear. Despite Jow Wilson, Saddam did in fact look into yellow cake from Niger and he sought and received aid from N. korea as well. So to look at the current peacekeeping/rebuilding war in Iraq in retrosepct: if so many Iraqi kids were dying due to sanctions, as tragic as it is, the UN sanctions are now lifted and people are dying to an equal or lesser extent. The real bad guys here are AQ, non-Iraqi terrorists who are trying to take over Iraq as their own ever since Afghanistan was taken from them; they are doing the killing now. At least they are lining up to get shot down like fish in a barrel there and not on US soil. The UN failed to uphold its responsibility and was sidestepped, and if Saddam didn't have any weapons, his bluff was called and good riddance. The surge is working, yet you won't here that from your local news channel.

Uncle Saddam is a great documentary of the dictator Saddam and his terrible regime. It's funny and so true! I love the film

I will not waste words. You simply MUST see this movie. As cheap as I am, as un-civic minded as I am, I'm going to buy a copy of this DVD and donate it to the city library--just to increase the circulation of this very important, interesting, and highly entertaining documentary. Joel Soler makes Michael Moore's work (Roger and Me) seem like a hillbilly hack!

I ordered this about a month ago and sent the 1st one back because the sound quality of the interview with the Director was terrible. I had to turn the volume up to max and try to listen over a white noise sound. The 2nd REPLACEMENT tape that they sent me had exactly the same problem. I am very irritated as the company sending out the new DVD did not check that the same flaw was not on the Replacement tape. I wonder what I will do as the company clearly does not care and this could happen again and again. I quite liked the DVD but the interview is important as it tell what the Director had to go through to get the footage that he shows.

Watch the interview with the director at the end. Taken together, this is one of the films that struck me both on my ironic funny bone and also informationally and emotionally. Humor and tragedy do go together -- to protect us from the ravaging impact of tragedy. The black irony in Solzhenitsyn's 'The Gulag Archipelago' allowed me to keep reading accounts of absolute horror. Uncle Saddam keeps me laughing and helps me not to go into the depths of despondency, but it sends its message across nonetheless! And afterwards, when directer Joel Soder tells his personal tale of the production, and of the people that he interviewed who were killed after he left, the reality of what was happening hit me all the more.

I will have to see Barbet Schroeder's "Idi Amin: A Self Portrait" (which on Netflix is called "General Idi Amin Dada," to make a comparison and see if the two films were even supposed to be similar! But I, having grown up in the Middle East, had never seen or heard of everything that Joel Soder put into his documentary, and I thought the presentation was what documentaries need to be: fast, witty, and NOT boring. Because this sort of stuff matters immensely: it is all exceedingly interesting at some point, and the presentation needs to deliver the interest to its target audience.

The documentary combined with the Directors Interview: 4 stars.

This is a primer on Saddam Hussein. I found the bonus features to be as interesting as the film.