Bagdad Central (Review)

[selenak]

Courtesy of ARTE, the French/German channel, I stumbled across this six part miniseries. Set in Iraq shortly after Saddam, it offers a solid noir plot, with the main twist being that it's believably and consistently told in the pov of the Iraqui main characters. Our hero is (former) Inspector Muhsin al-Khafaji, played by Waleed Zuaiter, whose son died as a dissident near the end of the Saddam era; at the start of the story, his older daughter, Sahwsan (Leem Lubany) has disappeared, and his search for her kicks the plot off, while his younger daughter, Mouaj (Judy Namir), is sick, which means he direly needs medical help. And those are just the starting difficulties. His search for his older daughter makes him suspicious to the American authorities which means, in Bush era Iraq, waterboarding and other brutalities, and no sooner has he gotten out of this that he's become a ping pong ball between British slime ball Frank Temple (played by Bertie Carvel, whom I last saw as Jonathan Strange) and US elephant-in-porcellain-surroundings Captain Parodi. There's also an Iraqui interpreter who loathes Khafaji for having been a part of the police in the Saddam era, and the death of his son still is an ongoing trauma for the surviving family. In short, Khafaji as befits a noir detective has all the odds against him, has do deal with shady authorities, and is haunted by his past. The emotional hook of the series lies in watching him navigate all these troubles and try and figure out a way to outwit Americans and Brits both while saving both his daughters and staying alive. Oh, and there's a case to solve in addition to finding his daughter (though as it turns out, inevitably, connected with her disappearance) as well.

The series wasn't shot on location, but it was shot in Marocco, and thus the war damaged Bagdad looks credibly non-Western, plus half the dialogue is in subtitled Arabic. Khafaji makes for an engaging hero, trying not just for survival but also for survival with decency, and this is a series where being kind is compatible with being smart, too. If I have one complaint, then it's the way the series wants to have its cake and eat it with Khaaji's backstory. The interpreter, who hates his guts, keeps accusing him of having committed undetailed crimes as part of having been a cop in Saddam's Bagdad, but then the show basically declares all Khafaji was guilty of was not quitting when his son got killed because he was afraid quitting would get his daughters and himself killed next. Look, show. If he was a cop in a dictatorship, then he can't have kept his hands clean. Especially since he's good as investigation. Either give him another former job, or commit to him having actually brought in not just thiefs and killers but also political opponents.. That aside, though, I thought the series did an excellent job using the noir tropes in a new setting (for them). (There's even a mysterious lady of uncertain loyalities, the (female) professor who was Sahwsan's mentor at the university.) And Bagdad, fresh out of a dictatorship, occupied by forces who have little idea what they're doing, with some of the younger people getting radicalized while others try to find a different life, and where you can get shot by any number of people from any number of factions just when crossing the street is both a good setting for such a a story and a vivid reminder of quite recent not even history.

("We liberated you! Why aren't you grateful" one of the US soldiers yells when a passing jeep is shouted at by Bagdad citizens; Khafajji is one of the passengers in the car, and the expression on his face, which still bears the marks of the "enhanced interrogation" he's been subjected to, says it all.)

(I should add that there are sympathetic Americans around, too, but they are not the ones from whose pov the story is told.)

I saw from the credits the miniseries is based on a novel, which I haven't read, so I can't say how faithful or not it deals with the source material. But as a miniseries, it felt briskly told, with engaging characters and a good, if perhaps too tropey conclusion.

Comments

[herself_nyc]

Thanks for the rec. I will tee it up when I'm done with my Twin Peaks: The Return rewatch.

[selenak]

Have you ever written meta about TP, or do you intend to write it? I'm curious about your thoughts.

[herself_nyc]

No, I haven't. But I'd love to discuss it with you. I was a fan of the original when it first aired, and was very excited about the continuation, which I found almost wholly successful, rich and beautiful. The way that Lynch and his collaborators think about "evil", where it springs from, what makes people do and become horrors -- I don't have a couple of adjectives for it, it keeps provoking new thoughts in me. The potency and beauty of his imagery is unparalleled. The humanity, the humor, which can be sometimes ironic and almost sick but then at other times show such a loving affirmation of people at their charming best, was great in the original and even more so in the reboot. And he gives us characters around whom real tragedy builds up -- you really care for them, and sitting with what they go through -- what is taken from them and imposed on them, how they're raped, assaulted, robbed of memories and time -- transcends a mere entertainment.

What else?

[selenak]

Alas I wasn't able to love the reboot as much as you did, see here, though I agree about Lynch's imagery!

[watervole]

With you on the back story. It's a bit like a novel set in the American south during the Civil War where the protagonist is both rich and anti-slavery.

Really?

[selenak]

Good simile. (BTW, the Emmerich movie The Patriot actually tries that one, not in a Civil War setting, but for its southern plantation owning protagonist in an American Revolution setting. Not only does he pay his black workers, he is even friends with Indians.)

[davetheanalyzer]

Haven't seen this but are "Bagdad" and "Iraqui" alternate spellings of "Baghdad" and "Iraqi?"

[selenak]

Bagdad is the German spelling; sometimes I find it hard to remember the English spellings of non-English names.

[davetheanalyzer]

Ah. I wondered. I was about to go in saying "Hey, you spelled these names wrong" but then it occurred to me they might be alternate spellings. Sorry to bug you about that.