Sundance Afterglow, Part One: Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?

by Lael

I was lucky enough to catch a screening of Morgan Spurlock's newest documentary effort Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. While not in competition and therefore not up for any awards, the film was definitely a hit with festival goers.

Billed as a failed attempt to locate one demonized Arab, Where in the World succeeds admirably at achieving its true objective of humanizing the larger Muslim and Arab population for the film's American audience. The filmmaker, a charismatic, refreshingly down-to-earth West Virginia native best known for his earlier critique of the fast food industry, Super Size Me (and also for producing the light-hearted, anti-commercialization documentary What Would Jesus Buy - see review), uses his prodigious charm to create near-instant rapport with almost everyone he encounters in the film. Indeed, I for one was left wishing that the entire US diplomatic corps could be made up of Spurlock's ilk. Then I went further and took to fantasizing about a world in which his playful and guileless yet thoughtful persona and visage were the face of America throughout the world.

Viewers who tend to skip documentaries in favor of standard dramatic and comedic Hollywood fare will likely enjoy this often hilarious, well-paced movie. That Spurlock makes a series of conversations with serious-minded intellectuals, journalists and military personnel, along with a smattering of average, everyday folks, into such solid entertainment is a testament to his inventiveness. The film's video game conceit (pitting an animated Spurlock against an animated Bin Laden) along with the filmmaker's improvisational skill and quick conversational wit all contribute to the movie's many laughs. At the same time, Where in the World addresses serious issues such as the use by Al-Qaeda of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict to recruit and galvanize extremists, the miserable conditions in remote regions of Afghanistan and the history of cynical, shortsighted US alliances with repressive Middle Eastern regimes.

Already set to be distributed by The Weinstein Company, Spurlock's documentary is likely to open wide. For the sake of increased international goodwill and deepened American understanding of the Islamic world, in other words, for the sake of peace, I certainly hope that it does.

| 01/31/08 | Entertainment