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 In cinemas Thursday[M]
Director: Morgan Spurlock
Runtime: 93mins
Morgan Spurlock’s playfully insightful examination of American stupidity steps up a notch in his latest film, Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? In Super Size Me, Spurlock put his body on the line in a sickening confrontation with the infamous, clown-fronted burger giant, McDonalds. This time, he puts his body on the line in a hazardous journey through various Middle Eastern nations on the trail of America’s #1 Bad Boy, Osama bin Laden.
After a flurry of vaccinations and some heavy-duty combat training, Spurlock hits the streets of Egypt, Morocco, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan to get the vibe on the ‘war on terror,’ what everyday people think of America, and where Osama bin Laden might be ‘hiding.’
I’m not giving anything away by telling you that Spurlock doesn’t find where Osama bin Laden is at. The general feeling seems to be the border country of Pakistan, in the treacherous tribal lands. But no one really knows. Osama’s been impossible to find, and a lot of people – including the US military – have pretty much stopped caring where he is.
So reclusive is Osama, in fact, that he’s metamorphosed into a phantasm, a figure that exists only as an image, and in the imagination. The photorealistic animations of him during the opening credits (in which he breaks down to MC Hammer’s You Can’t Touch This) make his 21st century status as an apparition fairly apparent. No one can prove this guy is even alive, but this doesn’t seem to matter. His image, and the invisible threats it signifies, function just fine without him.
 Predictably, Spurlock encourages us to laugh at this ‘image of evil,’ reassuring us that we don’t have to be afraid of it, and that it can feel good, even ‘liberating,’ to shake it off.
Spurlock’s wife is eight months pregnant when he leaves. That’s how much he wants to make this movie. He wants to spread a message of peace by awakening audiences to the effects that violent American intervention is having on families that are not so different from their own. The sanctity and innocence of childhood – safe, healthy childhood – is a recurring theme throughout, and it’s pretty hard to resist.
I get the feeling that many Australian viewers won’t find anything particularly surprising here. Spurlock seems to speak directly to ignorant Americans more than anyone else. But what’s uplifting is that the essential message of the film, a message systematically suppressed by syndicated mainstream media in a post 9/11 world, is continuing to move ever-outwards. Pretty cool.
****
ADAM DODD
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