Sergio Vieira de Mello: En Route To Baghdad
Picture: C
Sound: C+ Extras: C+ Documentary: B
Simone Duarte’s documentary Sergio Vieira de Mello: En
Route To Baghdad (2005) tells the story about the man who U.N. head Kofi
Annan put in charge of mediating occupied Iraq in 2001. He was the one who could make things work,
help bring democracy to the country and smooth out any problems between the
U.S., Europe and The Middle East. Born
in Brazil, he was a major agent for peace, but any such dreams died when a bomb
killed 22 people at the U.N. headquarters in Iraq including himself in what
some could consider an unfortunate occurrence.
However, considering how matters have been handled in
Iraq, though the 56 minutes length of the program never considers this, the
origin of the bomb should not be automatically considered that of
insurgents/terrorists from The Middle East.
Instead, when you finish watching the program and see what could have
been achieved by de Mello, you start to wonder if other forces more interested
in blood money and perpetual war might have just wanted to look that way and
get him out of the way.
However, the focus is about his achievements and the short
length of this program does not allow for investigation or speculation as to
what really happened. In the mere year
or so since its release, so many more scandals and so much more corruption has
come pouring out of The Bush Administration alone that nothing would surprise
us. Mr. Duarte ought to consider the
strong possibility of a sequel!
The 1.33 X 1 image originated on analog videotape and is
often poor with color and detail limits throughout, while the Dolby Digital 2.0
sound is simple stereo at best. Extras
include text biography on the director & de Mello including a timeline of
his career, trailers for other First Run DVDs and interview with Annan on de
Mello.
- Nicholas Sheffo
