LAURA POITRAS REVIEW: THE OATH ‘It is no longer a question of destroying cement and glass’ From the title of the second film in Laura Poitras’ trilogy on America post­9/11, it is clear that words matter. Just as an oath requires quiet and mutually understood terms, for a film to allow a focus on language the structure and support must also be clear, or at least appear to be so. From the opening shots and subtitles the premise of ​
The Oath ​
seems straightforward, a portrait of two distinct yet entangled men. The first is Abu Jandal, Osama bin­Laden’s former body­guard; the second is his brother­in­law, Salim Hamdan, bin­Laden’s former driver and the first man to be trialed in Guantanamo Bay for war­crimes related to the September 11 attacks. This twin­portrait has a shared time, and from both Yemen and the Guantanamo Bay press­room, Hamdan’s trial structures the duration of the film— everyone is waiting. Not only a portrait, another word becomes important: judgement. In this film, words matter in so far as they create judgements, the looming trial providing another clear structure, another sense of weight. We watch Hamdan’s military lawyer struggle to find the right expression, his words witness to other judgements, such as how Hamdan’s family were not permitted to be at his trial, or crucially whether Hamdan is in fact a terrorist or just a ‘salary driver’. We witness Jandal, now a taxi­driver, tell the camera how he is still unsure of whether he is or is not responsible in some way for Hamdan’s detention, whether he would or would not have participated in the September 11 attacks, whether he is or is not still bound to the Al­Qaeda oath. Throughout the film judgements such as these accumulate and agglomerate, implicating Western consumer products, the history of war trials, the lives of ‘normal’ Yemeni youths, or what the sugar­free cake, diet Pepsi and fruit knife really meant when Jandal was offered them during FBI interrogations. Just as one word cannot be isolated from an oath, or a judgement from its context, similarly to take a scene or statement out of ​
The Oath ​
would risk simplification, a loss of meaning, a loss of truth. Perhaps this is a loss worth risking, for towards the end of the film we return to footage we have seen before — of Jandal being interviewed on an Arabic current affairs program. Provoked by his interviewer, Jandal explains that now, in order to be true to his beliefs and convictions — the ones that had previously led him to abandon his family without word for jihad in Bosnia, the ones that led him to the role of ‘Emir of Hospitality’ at Al­Qaeda’s guest­house — he, rather than holding a gun, chooses to hold a pen. This scene is crucial because through these words, through Jandal’s judgement, we arrive somewhere else — Jandal gives us the ​
image​
of the radical. For how does one best embody their beliefs? Without warning, this question starts to breakdown the clear structure Poitras had set­up earlier in the film, because this now directly involves her. Why is she filming Abu Jandal, as he prays, as he works, as he speaks to his son, to youth interested in jihad, to the media? How can we understand the actions and work of Laura Poitras as being true to something, as being radical? The answer perhaps lies in another word, or now, thing: the image. This ‘thing’ is nothing simple, and its meaning and effects go beyond the parameters of this essay. But what is no doubt clear is that this film, this moving image, is composed of other images. In a literal sense, we see indescribable footage of Hamdan interrogated by the U.S. Army; we see a photograph of Jandal’s son as a baby, an AK­47 rifle positioned above his head; we see Hamdan’s youngest daughter smile for the camera, a smile he has only ever seen in photos; we see court­room drawings displayed with officials reporting to the media; we see a news interview with bin­Laden foretelling a future of dead American sons. The film is also composed of another kind of image, where images provoke and fuse with judgements. For instance, we hear how the destroyed World Trade Centre, this ​
spectacular​
attack, can be figured as America’s shamed face,​
evidence​
of its loss of dignity. We might withdraw from previous judgements as we see an American military lawyer unrelenting in his dedication to Hamdan’s case and innocence. Or judgement might become impossible as Jandal simultaneously shifts between ‘dangerous threat’ and ‘reformed criminal’, between his numerous aliases, including ‘Nasser al­Bahri’ and ‘Abu Hamza’, and the countless other images he remains ‘faithful’ to. Like judgements, in ​
The Oath​
images proliferate and accumulate. Another point of similarity between a judgement and an image is that the process of witnessing is integral to their being. For a judgement to exist as such, it must be witnessed, whether that is by the law, by a friend, or by your second self. For an image to exist as such, as a fixed construction, it must be seen, noticed, identified. This witnessing therefore bears the weight of truth – whether it is a ‘just’ judgement, whether it is a ‘true’ representation. This indeed could be said for all things — that every ​
thing​
must be in some way ‘witnessed’ in order to ‘truly’ exist — and this is certainly the point. Carefully constructed throughout the duration of the film, we understand that nothing like the truth or the law exists absolutely, that there is no sense of justice that isn’t in equal measure deceit, fiction, falsity. We see this in how Jandal constructs an image of a dead­battery, when one of his clients asks if the camera on his dashboard is filming, to make sure he keeps his customer. We see this in how the U.S. government passes new laws specifically written in order to convict Hamdan, to justify the inconceivable abuse of power and violence committed by the American State and its ‘War on Terror’. At first appearing deceptively clear, ​
The Oath ​
devolves into a witnessing of images and their judgements — the catastrophic effects of ‘truth’. To return to an earlier question, what makes this film, and Poitras, truly radical — or to better phrase it, how this film articulates a different meaning of the judgement ‘radical’ — is that it becomes not a question of ​
being ​
but of ​
doing​
. Poitras’ camera — not gun, nor pen — witnesses the doing of judgement, the doing of images, and therefore the doing of truths, and more importantly asks us to understand, to see, more fully the weight/wait of their witnessing.