This PBS documentary, which I caught in a preview screening presented by the LA Film Forum at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica, is about genocide. Specifically it follows genocide scholar Daniel Goldhagen as he investigates various contemporary genocides and why genocide keeps occurring in research for his book, Worse Than War. The main flaw of this film is that the "dispassion"- as it was repeatedly referred to- of Goldhagen carries over to the audience, and I found myself leaving the doc back in the theater, barely thinking about it after I left. No film about genocide should be shaken that easily. But the fact is that I wasn't even haunted by some of the terrible images that the film showed, because they were presented through such scholarly posturing that I was not compelled to identify at all with the questions about humanity inherent in a piece about genocide. Goldhagen was so unlikable and cocky that his dispassion became mine and the doc fell flat. Too bad, because I'm a real easy target for such work, and I presume it will have a similar effect on other viewers.
Worse Than War will air on PBS on April 14.
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