User reviews

Bitter Lake is a complex, intriguing yet at times confused history of UK and US interference in Afghanistan over the past several decades.

The basic premise is that Western errors in the Middle East stem largely from an early accord struck by FDR with Saudi Arabia at the eponymous Bitter Lake on the Suez Canal, just after World War II. This support of Saudi Arabia, Curtis contends, indirectly led to the promotion of fundamentalist factions that have subsequently generated much of the violence in the Middle East, culminating in the ISIS movement today.

It's an interesting point of view, and Curtis supports it with plenty of detail. The pay off comes when he uses this perspective to explain more recent events. For example, he shows why the 9/11 attackers, as well as Osama Bin Laden, all had a Saudi background. It's a connection that's been largely forgotten in Western media, and which I had never seen properly explained.

Curtis succeeds even better at depicting the endless conflicts in Afghanistan as they must appear from the Afghan point of view. He argues convincingly that Western troops have been fighting a shadow war, engaging in the wrong battles, with the wrong foes, based on misguided objectives and a total lack of understanding of the fractured Afghan social structure. "There is something else out there, but we just don't have the apparatus to see it," says Curtis.

Less effective is Curtis' tendency to frame all this in terms of good intentions that have almost certainly never existed at the highest levels of US or UK power. It may be that the troops and functionaries sent in to Afghanistan believed they were "creating democracy," but it's highly implausible that the White House or the Pentagon - or Downing Street - ever believed anything so naive and altruistic.

The film is also weakened structurally by its needlessly slow pace, and by the inclusion of long stretches of video footage with no narration, which add little to our understanding. It's often not clear exactly what we're watching. Some segments - such as several minutes of a soldier playing with a tame bird - serve no purpose whatsoever, and should have been left on the cutting room floor.

Nonetheless, Bitter Lake is well worth seeing, for the alternative, worm's-eye view it gives us of the endless conflict in Afghanistan. It's as if the film had been made by Afghans, to help us understand the unwarranted and wantonly destructive interventions that have been conducted by our governments in this distant and very alien country.

Bitter Lake is for the most part a history of interventions in Afghanistan by the US, the UK and also Russia since halfway the 20th century.

The film follows the extremist Islamic idea of Wahhabism. It was transported east through the Arabic world, influencing the formation of the Taliban, Al Quaida and ISIS. All because the US accepted the idea in the partners they dealt with while looking for oil.

It's an interesting documentary, told mostly chronologically. This allows Curtis to compare events through time, for example the Russian invasion to the more recent western occupation.

A lot of the footage that is shown is filmed in Afghanistan and this stresses the constant violence the land has to witness. Because of the many groups involved in each area, enemy is a diffuse term there.

The film is advertised as epic on the BBC Iplayer but could have been shorter. In the first half there were shots in between the narrative that could have been left out. But all in all Bitter Lake offers a perspective that is great at telling us something about the modern world and a lot about Afganistan.

This film marks a new era in online content from both one of the worlds great broadcasters and filmmakers.

Rather than be constrained by the formats of television and convention of breaking things up into mini-series (Curtis has already made several of such landmarks), Adam Curtis has been given the freedom to make a lengthy, challenging feature documentary that has gone straight to BBC iplayer.

The result is a departure from his usual heavily-narrated work to a much more impressionistic piece of cinema that uses the metaphor of SOLARIS for the incomprehensible Afghanistan and related middle east conflicts. Raw footage is able to speak for itself. Typically cutting-room-floor material, such as shaky re-framing between shots is used to express something of complexity, like reading between the lines.

The BBC's job is to be relevant and provide what the market is unable to do. Here, the BBC triumphs, Curtis having the shackles taken off has delivered a giant canvas of grey with various drip patterns, which is the perpetual mess of foreign intervention in Afghanistan and western policy in the middle east. The closer you get, the more complicated it is.

Labor, Conservatives, Democrats and Republicans all get a hiding in the cyclical mess, which is examined via the extensive BBC archives to Which Curtis was given full access to.

Some highlights include:

Art teachers sent from England to the Afghan war effort to educate Afghanis about Marcel Duchamp and the early Avant-Garde.

British "supermarket" for high-tech weaponry, set out like a luxury department store of big-toys whose customers are wealthy Gulf states. In Thatcher-era Britain, this was one of the most thriving industries.

Highly recommended. This marks a new era because instead of bite-sized webisodes, this is a very serious piece of long-form filmmaking being made exclusively for what must become the main platform for public broadcasters world wide (online content). Though counterintuitive to what we perceive online content to be like, work like this is vital both in-itself but for breaking new ground and showing us what is possible with the relatively new platform/medium.

Mike Retter

People are immobilised mentally by gratefully clinging to the more glorious story of our attempts to rid the world of evil, to the extent that, as a result, they are no longer able to construct a sensible equation between what is being achieved and the suffering of others. We have become like the Germans were, over which we scoffed and carped and declared our moral superiority for decades, offering, as they did, nothing but adulation for the glorious troops and dismissing the treacherous thought that evil was being done. This is an important historical document confronts us under the pure rules of reason with an intervention by the British Crown in Helmand which was both a terrible and an act of profound evil because despite being told in no uncertain terms that they were about to attack a host of innocent people trying to resist the corrupt local government, we dropped bombs on them thereby turning appalling injustice into a catastrophe for the innocent by an act of supreme evil. The great point illustrated here, which no-one is really picking up, is that the mainstream news never told the country about this possibility, only of our honour and bravery and sacrifice in pursuing the Taliban, which turns out to be dishonest and unbalanced reporting, acting for the state, not the honour of the Press and Media. We can from these brave revelations that if something is not done then Big Brother and The Ministry of Truth will have got its way and vanquished our national sense of fair play and humanity. It is deeply worrying to our democracy and the plurality required of the Mass media that the BBC has prevented this programme from general release and that it will soon be lost to us because DVD's are not possible as things stand and it will be removed from its only source, iPlayer, worryingly for free speech the film has already been stopped on YouTube, what does that say? Adam Curtis has tried everything here to get through our complacency and to awaken us to what is really happening, and it is time that we told our leaders that they must stop and that an independent Judicial Enquiry over which the Government and Crown have no control be undertaken to root out those who commit these awful crimes in our names whilst skulking behind doors of secrecy. It shows that our democracy is a fraud as no-one would have wanted any of this in their name.

I like Adam Curtis - he is a strong force for good in this world and he usually offers a much needed balance to the usual party and partisan line. He makes the kind of films that Michael Moore would surely like to make if he didn't need the money so much. Bitter Lake attempts to explain the complex situation in Afghanistan and the history behind the UK and US failed military objectives and recent withdrawals. It is a long film and it is not told in a linear fashion. It's a sonic and visual roller coaster ride - so you had better commit time to it. Don't watch it if you are tired or seeking some benign background amusement. A few people have mentioned about the scene with the soldier and the bird. I think that they perhaps missed the irony and the juxtaposition of it. There were many other scenes that were there doing the same job. Bitter Lake is an important film because it enlightened me as to how the British Army, The Red Army and the US Army and many other Western Powers and Organisations have failed in all of their efforts to tame this wild and archaic land with their hardy, courageous, stubborn and proud people.

Bitter Lake strives for historic synopsis over caustic polemic, despite its comprehensive narrative holding a somewhat narrow perspective. Interestingly, some of the more controversial topics that media cannot resist spinning into an overwhelming assault, like farts saturating an enclosed room, are blown past with refreshingly little fanfare while occasionally approaching, though not brazenly crossing lines into conspiracy-theory territory. A couple of times, just as I would start to feel that old familiar twinge of impending blame-placing political distraction infesting our network and cable news, it seemed the film would deftly shift gears to surpass the tumult. The film is slick and stylish, perhaps to the point of self-indulgence, but that also really sets this doc apart.

'And so the story goes, they wore the clothes to make it seem impossible. The whale of a lie like they hope it was.'

The music of the chameleonic, ambiguous, faded jaded star who fell to earth and sold the world is the key to this film, which challenges the very concept of a documentary.

Is this postmodernism in extremis or a clarion call to revolution? That question is the very point. Curtis presents a very clear and persuasive narrative of world events over, no, within a surreal AND undeniably real meditation that is at once document and dream. It is as true and fabricated and horrific as Apocalypse Now while being somehow less stagey. The footage is real. Most of it. (Although Bowie could be as stagey as any marionette or as sparsely bleak as the shellshocked junkie).

Bitter Lake is a documentary about Afghanistan. And the modern world. The media. Itself. Chameleon, corinthian, and caricature. It is an attempt to be as contemplative as Tarkovsky, as bitterly ironic, and yet it is clear that Curtis is trying to tell not (only) an artistic truth but a historical truth.

The good men of tomorrow, according to the Western forces, turned out not to be what they seemed, buying their positions with heroin and trust. The complexities of Afghanistan's politics and the relation of Afghanistan to world politics, these are not just tackled by Bitter Lake, they are evoked. Is the lake beyond comprehension or can we come to terms with it and ourselves? Bitter Lake is never as glib as that question. You could say it was postmodern and experimental, but it seems too well constructed, or perhaps dreamed, to dissolve into a sea of perspectives. Perhaps it is something new. A myriad that reassembles itself into a guided missile. It certainly feels vital, important, but from these shores the eventual impact is... far off. I might just slip away.

The documentary is an attempt to answer the question of why are events that we cannot seem to comprehend happen, or rather an assoertion of why we can't simplify things when there is a hidden layer of complexity we're not able to put our hands on exactly. In the process of answering the question the us-Saudi alliances over the years are discussed, the British,americans,Russians, attempts to modernize Afganistan and its Solaris-like effect on its members, the rise of banks to power and control in the world, and finally the conclusion with which we're left thinking: good vs evil simplicity doesn't exist in this complex, beyond our understanding world

There are a lot of very detailed and thoughtful reviews of this movie if you want more help determining if you should watch this film. I want to talk about how to watch it. Because you should, if you can stand it. I thought some of the information on the history of the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia and how it affected Afghanistan to be interesting and relevant.

But, as with a few other reviewers, I felt a lot of the footage was unnecessary and distracting. We learn that things aren't always as black and white as they presented to us in news stories - that the messages have been simplified to make it easier to grasp and perhaps to hide mistakes that have been made. But in this "experimental" documentary, the explanations are muddied with clips that perhaps are designed to make us think, but in my case a lot of my thoughts were, "What is the point of this?"

"Bitter Lake" could be an important movie if it were a lean 80 or 90 minutes long instead of 2 1/4 hours.

But if you try watching and find yourself losing patience at times as I did, or if you are hesitant to even start watching, I have a suggestion. Watch the screen only when the narrator voice-over is present. This will give you the bulk of the orderly, historical stuff. Look away when it shifts to people dancing, or a soldier balancing a small bird in his hand. Do text messages during the comedy movie clips, or when the camera focuses for 30 solid seconds on the death stare of a "freedom" fighter. Obviously, this will be more easily achieved watching at home than in a theater, and cost a bit less, also.

I'm watching this in 2022, Truss and Kwarteng have just tanked the pound, Putin has annexed a part of Ukraine the size of Portugal and Afghanistan remains a conflict zone, still totally let down by the collective West. Curtis creates fever dream documentaries which are part real, part drama, part history lesson. This one covers the UK and US and to a certain extent the Soviets influence in Afghanistan and also the rise of wahabbism in Saudi Arabia and it's subsequent export to the West in sept 2001. It is an affecting and thought provoking essay on all these subjects and more, done with panache in Curtis' unique style. Please watch this film.

Overall, as a documentary of American involvement in Afghanistan and its role as the power behind the 'throne' of Saudi Arabia it is overly long and of insufficient substance. There are many long sequences of essentially 'art house' material that does not drive the narrative. The actual narrative is no more than 15 minutes in length, and really that is well worth watching. Is it worth wading through more than 2 hours of 'found footage' for this narrative; for most people, I would say it's not. And that's probably why the BBC decided to release this only online on iPlayer. Even there it's not exactly very well promoted; the BBC's own iplayer search engine will not find it. It is still there but you have to use google to find out where it is. As to the narrative itself there are a number of fundamental flaws. The most important part of which is the importance and relevance of a British role in current affairs; there is a constant refrain of America and Britain, as if the two were somehow a joint force; that Britain somehow leads the way and America follows. It is Britain that industrialises and then so does America. It is British banks in which the Saudis kept their wealth, and it was this wealth that was then lent to people who could not pay it back, and the Americans followed along with this. In reality, it is Britain who has industrialised following its loss of empire, along with other previous European imperial powers like France. And it was British and other European banks that were bankrupted by wall street banks trying to shift their bad loans onto anyone foolish enough to buy them. Yes, a few wall street banks did go bankrupt but today they are stronger than ever. British banks are by contrast still bankrupt, kept alive by state ownership. Yes, there is the 'rust belt' in America where you can find disused factories but there is also 'silicon valley' which is a model of efficient production. In reality there has been a shift in the American economy which has led to decline in some areas and great wealth in others. And that shift is in some way reflected not in Britain in but within the European Union as a whole. Areas such as Britain are in decline but areas such as Germany, Denmark, and Netherlands have no empty factories and are very much in the ascendant.

As for the political narrative that is superimposed onto events this is even more naïve. The image of 'good and evil', of 'liberating' foreign lands and bringing modern 'civilization' and technological progress to backward peoples is straight from 'empire'. The Americans don't really believe this because they quite plainly install corrupt undemocratic client regimes where they can and don't put serious money into improving the countries over which they have dominion. What Curtis is actually describing is the narrative of 'empire' where the British attempted to colonize much of the world including countries such as China and India; and where this did include huge investments to rebuild entire nations in the British imperial image, which was done under the narrative of 'modernization' and 'civilization'. America has always been careful in reflecting this narrative of 'empire' to the British to allow them the illusion of past glory. Curtis uncritically and unthinkingly reflects this back again, apparently unwittingly inwards to a British audience.

Adam Curtis therefore makes fundamental errors in describing our own society. His narrative of Islamic society is much worse. Just as one example; to say the Osama bin Laden as a major influence in the Islamic world is just wrong. He was a member of a (tiny) militant offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which was (and still is) led by Dr. Ayman al-Zawahri. Curtis knows this because he made a similar (and much better) documentary about 9/11 in 2004. The conclusion of that documentary was that 'al-queda' was an invention of the American intelligence and did not really exist. Here Curtis seems to forget the conclusions of his previous work and play into the conventional narrative put forward by Washington. Rather conveniently, it is all the fault of the 'extreme' views of the 'wahabis'. He draws a rather convenient thread from the extremists who brought the Saudi 'king' to power to the current target of an American bombing campaign in the middle east : Islamic State. Again, this does not in any way reflect the complexities of Islamic society in the middle east but rather a concern some in Washington have about their ally Saudi Arabia, on whom they depend on for oil. Who are Islamic State really? Surely Curtis would be aware of the small band of extremists who started in Mecca and Medina 1400 years ago and whose 'caliphate' within a few years threatened the gates of Constantinople, the imperial capital of the eastern roman empire. The greeks who ran the eastern roman empire had a great fear of these 'crazies' from the desert. Ironically the beliefs of these greeks stemmed from five centuries before this when another small band of 'crazies' threatened the roman empire; a band of extremist jews whose radical interpretation of Plato undermined the belief system of the roman world.

Bitter Lake is an unfortunate nadir in Curtis' output. The quality of his analysis his become considerably degraded over the years. This film takes the position that the US and British military states began with the noble but naive intention of creating "modern democracy" in Afghanistan, but their plans were frustrated by the inscrutability of the East. There are two assumptions here which are highly questionable at best, one of which also contradicts his earlier, more detailed work.

Firstly, I would have expected the author of Century of the Self to be more critical of the concept of "modern democracy", which he takes here to be a moral axiom requiring no further analysis. Like anyone with a basic grasp of modern history, he should know very well that "democracy" in this context is simply a code-word for acceptance of the US corporate-dominated economic and military world system, as it has been since at least the end of WW2. Furthermore, he is being implausibly generous by accepting that the stated aim of installing modern democracy in Afghanistan was, in fact, the motivating factor behind the US war machine's destruction of that territory, rather than just a throwaway industry-standard piece of war propaganda for mass consumption. It is more plausible to argue, as Peter Dale Scott does, that, taking into account the pivotal geo- strategic position of Afghanistan, this was an operation to replace non-compliant drug dealing warlords with compliant drug-dealing warlords.

The second element of Curtis' story is the frustration of the Empire's noble efforts by the mysterious and Otherly nature of Afghanistan itself. The disjointed selection of contextless images seems to be designed to create an impression of an incomprehensible alien culture. Afghan languages are often left untranslated. The narrative jumps backwards and forwards in time, deliberately juxtaposing images that are not directly causally connected, creating a kaleidoscopic opium dream of exotic hats, inexplicable actions and inscrutable expressions, a regression to 19th-century orientialism. In this case, Curtis' vague efforts to go beyond the linear narrative of the documentary form actually provide an important part of the pro-imperialist argument of the film - the irrational East counterpoised against the linear West.

It is unfortunate to see Curtis' level of analysis becoming so much more superficial than in his earlier, more original work. The arguments of Bitter Lake would fit comfortably in a Guardian editorial agonising about the latest failure of the Empire's noble military ambitions.

Bitter Lake did not make it onto TV – not even BBC4; I guess this means that it is so highbrow that even those with free access to BBC4 have the chance to brag about seeking it out on the BBC iplayer rather than watching "public" television. It certainly plays out as something for the discerning viewer – constructed from endless footage, we have a documentary that builds a decades-long narrative around the conflict in the Middle East, and the collapse of our Western leadership, but yet still takes its time to let odd moments play out in silence.

The effect is an engaging one. Visually it is impressive in the variety of the footage and the real oddity thereof. Curtis' intelligent tones go across all of it, and he does build an engaging case as he goes. The style and pacing of the film help hook you so you are very much with him as he talks, as opposed to sitting away looking to be sold. The problem I had was that the film does cover so much ground, and so much complexity, but yet it is very simple in terms of its message and content. The events are absolute and clear as this film would have it – which is ironic considering it is critical of the politicians in the West for making real life so binary.

I did still find it an engaging experience, build with passion and style, but it is an Adam Curtis film and should be watched as such – it is not really a deeply factual and detailed exploration of a subject, so much as it is an experience to be taken on.

Powerful and at times brutal documentary that lays bare the history behind the current day situation in Afghanistan - from Roosevelt and the Saudi's, the Russians and the Muhajideen, the British and the international arms trade, the global banking system to Bin Laden and of course the Taliban - what an utter mess of failed diplomacy, vested interests, corruption, religion, fanatical idealism, terror and varied international 'meddling' on a grand scale leading to many decades of political instability and human tragedy.

There's no good versus evil here, because other than the Afghan people no one comes out of this with any merit.

I gained a real insight into the turmoil, sadness and repeated failures in Afghanistan. The skillful way in which history was blended with real life stories made this more than just a cold documentary. There is a scene when an association attempt is made. The chaotic manner in which the incident happens and the motorcade is unable to plough through the disorganised streets of Kabul brought home how much this country has been ravaged by idiots, sinister barbarians and the American petrodollars.

There are some brilliant touches where Curtis's instructions to interviewees become part of the unfolding story adding to the sense that the lives of ordinary Afghani's is there to be exploited at the beck and call of western overloads who are playing out their own agenda. The world would be so different if the country was aloud to modernise without too much external pressure and importantly, Saudi Arabia was kept in check. These are the key lessons for me. The rest is a dreadful tale of stupidity, arrogance and a willful disregard for humanity.

After watching the documentary for about two or three times, it seems to me that Adam Curtis was in a mere stream of consciousness simulating what is going in our heads in real time. He tacitly promised that he will dissect what politicians and bankers have secreted away; however, he made the the truth truths by letting us in a tragedy of perspective where we look at the same object, Afghanistan, but with different eyes. Some will blame him for hyper-complicating the job of the viewer. I can identify this documentary with the canonical novel of Moby Dick where its canonicity comes from going against the grain and where what we have been taught or told is not the truth but a layer or mimesis. In his quest towards the East, Adam strives to highlight the idea that politicians are involved in this fiasco by letting it to bankers, bankers who would not let it go without any financial benefit taken from the commoners, commoners who believe in fairy stories more than in science. That is the world of Adam Curtis

My favourite documentary of all time. The information, pace, music, imagery and mood is second to none.

Bitter Lake is an ambitious documentary that begins with some promise. But I soon lost patience with it and after 40 minutes I stopped watching it. The ambition consists in the breadth of the perspective it adopts so as to illuminate how the mess that is contemporary Afghanistan, and in particular contemporary Helmand province, came to be. It locates the roots of this mess in deals at the end of WW2 that Roosevelt entered into innocently enough--perhaps naively even--with the monarchs of Afghanistan (modernisation via energy and irrigation from US built dams) and Saudi Arabia (modernisation by dollars exchanged for oil). Unsurprisingly, both monarchs were also playing local power politics that Roosevelt probably knew or cared nothing about: the former aiming to consolidate the control of his family and more generally that of his fellow Pashtuns at the expense of Afghanistan's other ethnicities, the latter to consolidate the control of his own family at the expense of radical Wahabists who were opposed to a modernisation that threatened to dilute, curtail or corrupt Wahabism. The intrinsic interest of such information is enhanced by fascinating original footage. Unfortunately Curtis ruins it all by eschewing the linear narrative that is essential to a clear presentation of such complex material so as to indulge in frequent cross-cutting without rhyme or reason back and forth in time and space; moreover, instead of weeding out images irrelevant to his narrative he revels in them. This technique works well for thrillers or for director-centred explorations of the auteur's mind. But when it is adopted in a documentary it just creates noise. What a pity!

Adam Curtis can be a brilliant film-maker: he has a master's eye for picking out odd, disturbing achieve footage that challenges our preconceptions; and likewise, an ability to look at things from novel angles and tell stories that question the foundations of so much mainstream reporting. But 'Bitter Lake' arguably isn't his very best work, principally because it's so long in duration and broad in focus. There may well be deep causes underlying many superficially separate world events; but Curtis gives us a linear story, where A leads to B leads to C, and the global stock-market meltdown of 2008 is presented as a direct consequence of a deal that Roosevelt stuck on a lake in Suez. Things connect in many ways, and Curtis does us a service by emphasising often overlooked points of contact; yet it's not always clear what the point is supposed to be beyond the seductiveness of the narrative. Within this documentary, there's a fine film about Afghanistan waiting to be edited out of a slow, sprawling but still arresting alternative history of the world.

First documentary I've tried to watch that substituted actual narration for the insertion of random video clips and annoying background music. There's just enough narration in parts I guess for it to classify as a documentary, but the complete random selection of clips and music started to drive me nuts after a while.

For example, "President Karzai's Motorcade" shows on the screen, followed by a lot of shooting and the aftermath. But it comes at a fairly random point, and there are no explanations, just UFO landing music in the background.

Don't get me wrong, I lasted the whole thing and some of it was very interesting, but I got the distinct impression someone is touting for awards rather than a coherent narration.

Even for an avid documentary lover this film manages to take the interest out of one of the most relevant topics of our time. I tried watching it twice but abandoned it 1.5h into the spectacle both times, because it was just annoyingly biased, simplistic content with a lot of predictable art school type 'look at my meaningful composition of clips' faffing. Incredibly hard to follow rambling type of story telling that does nothing to keep and peak the viewers attention at reasonable intervals.

However, I guess it is noteworthy that at least someone is pushing the boundaries of narration and film making here.

Bitter Lake is described as "a new, adventurous and epic film that explains why the big stories that politicians tell us have become so simplified that we can't really see the world any longer".

Unfortunately this is somewhat at odds with around 20mins (if that) of explanatory content in a film with a 136min runtime and the majority of that explanatory content consists of flat statements made by Curtis. I'd hoped for 136mins of well researched dense substantiated content what I got was a childishly simple narrative spaced out with some 100+mins of beautiful footage (much of it irrelevant or unexplained). Spend 5mins on Wikipedia and you'd learn more than you would from this film...

To describe this as a deep and multi-layered documentary on its subject would be as naive as taking a politician's sound-bite at face value.

3 stars for the footage and soundtrack. None for the research and exposition.