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Mohamedou Ould Salahi was held at Guantanamo Bay for 14 years despite the fact that he had never been charged with a crime. He was apprehended shortly after the September 11th attacks and accused of being one of the key recruiters for the attacks, despite the fact that there was almost no evidence linking him to the attacks. As a result of one of the hijackers spending the night on Salahi’s couch, Salahi has become yet another victim in the international pursuit of justice. In a book titled Guantanamo Diary, which was published in 2015 and quickly became a best-seller around the world, he described his imprisonment and torture in detail. It was inevitable that a film would be made of Salahi’s story, and now “The Mauritanian,” starring Kevin Macdonald, is available. Tahar Rahim, Jodie Foster, and Benedict Cumberbatch all give strong performances in this old-fashioned drama, which is a pleasure to watch. While telling a true story, “The Mauritanian” never manages to humanize the characters or elevate the narrative to something more challenging or interesting than a superficial, manipulative account of true events.
Salahi (Rahim) is apprehended in November 2001, and the film then jumps to 2005, when Nancy Hollander (Foster) agrees to press the government to indict the man on some sort of criminal charge. According to what the majority of people are aware of, Guantanamo Bay was a lawless environment where people could be held without charge for years at a time and tortured into confessing to something that may or may not have occurred. Many times, the federal courts have found that people were being held there unlawfully, and Salahi’s situation is one of the most high-profile and disturbing cases in recent memory. Salahi was accused of being the man who recruited people to fly planes into the World Trade Center after a chance encounter and a phone call from Bin Laden’s phone led to the conclusion that he was the one. They held him for years despite the lack of evidence and charges against him, and Hollander’s case begins with a simple habeas corpus petition, in which the government would be forced to either charge Salahi or release him. She enlists the help of an associate named Teri (Shailene Woodley) to assist her with the investigation, and she soon discovers more and more disturbing truths about Guantanamo. Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Couch (Benedict Cumberbatch), on the other hand, is tasked with defending the government’s position, but he soon discovers the extent of his own country’s crimes.
By playing with the structure of the film, the script by M.B. Traven, Rory Haines, and Sohrab Noshirvani attempts to make “The Mauritanian” more engaging. It jumps back and forth between 2005 and 2002, when Salahi was tortured, and then director Kevin Macdonald amplifies that by experimenting with aspect ratios. Some of it is effective in certain situations. It’s effective to shoot Salahi’s early interrogation scenes in 4:3 to give the impression that he’s trapped and boxed in, but it becomes unnecessary after a while—at one point, director Kevin Macdonald layers a widescreen present day scene over a flashback scene. When the characters become disoriented as a result of the over-direction, it culminates in a re-creation of the torture that Salahi endured during the film’s climax, an extended sequence of horrendous violence, which brings the film to a close. It is noteworthy that what happened to Salahi was not soft-pedaled, but rather appears to be showy rather than true.
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Worst of all, everyone begins to feel like a piece of equipment. Salahi serves as a proxy for all Guantanamo detainees; Couch takes on the role of the disillusioned patriot; and Hollander is a non-character in such a way that one wonders why we’re spending so much time with her in the first place. Perhaps any of these people could have been more compelling as the film’s focal point, but when presented in this context, they become indistinguishable from one another. In terms of his actors, Macdonald does a good job—Rahim has always been a great actor, and Cumberbatch brings unexpected depth to the film that isn’t in the script, particularly as he realizes just how much his country has done—but they get lost in the manufactured, dull script, despite their efforts to inject some nuance into it. Foster is subjected to the same treatment, as he is forced to shuffle papers and read them carefully far too many times.
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As in so many true stories, we see footage of the real Salahi in the final scenes of “The Mauritanian,” and it becomes clearer than ever that what came before this wasn’t really his story. Yes, one should only judge the film in front of them, but it’s fair to be critical of a work that doesn’t know what story to tell and, worse, that places the focus on the white saviors of the captured prisoner rather than the prisoner himself as the central character. Even though Rahim does a fantastic job of convincing us to empathize with Salahi, seeing the real man smiling and singing serves as a reminder of how far the film goes in pushing other narratives into what should have been a deeply human and relatable story rather than another straightforward accounting of a dark chapter in the history of the world. With each new revelation about torture and injustice revealed in Donald Macdonald’s film, Salahi himself becomes lost in the narrative and ultimately becomes just another face in a sea of abused prisoners.
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The film is currently playing in theaters and will be available on VOD in March.
For more personality quizzes check this: Witnesses Quiz.
