Is there any image in the post 9/11 conspiracy drama genre more ubiquitous than heavily redacted legal files? Those black lines struck through word after word like blocks of thunder smothering all sense of intelligent life. They represent the hopeless struggle of men and women stolen from the world and suspended in a bureaucratic limbo that Kafka himself would find hard pressed to imagine. In Kevin Macdonald’s adaptation of Guantanamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Salahi, The Mauritanian, we are confronted with 20,000 boxes worth.
Salahi was detained in Guantanamo Bay for 14 years, the victim of extraordinary rendition after the 9/11 attacks and then “special measures” ordered by Donald Rumsfeld in order to stop a second 9/11. He was subjected to 70 days of torture by military intelligence which included stress positions, visual protocols, waterboarding, sexual humiliation, and even a fake execution.
The Mauritanian should be a terrifying prospect then, a man disconnected physically and spiritually from his former life, a life that saw him study engineering as a young man in Germany and train and fight with al Qaeda, then one of the many Mujahideen groups in Afghanistan against the communist central government and funded by the C.I.A. Instead, there is an air of childish optimism that strips the film of the cold outrage it should induce, especially as producer Benedict Cumberbatch is miscast as the upstanding prosecutor Lt. Col Stuart Couch. He is neither villain enough to sell his redemptive arc nor threatened enough by the shadowy conspiracy he proclaims to be on the outside of.
Macdonald’s film builds slowly to Salahi’s hideous ordeal and it unfolds as a lurid set piece punctuated by blinding strobe lights and Death Metal. The horror is stark and hallucinatory, but the agitated jump cuts somehow lessen what should be the most depraved of human experiences short of being tortured to death. One wonders what a director like Alan Clarke would have done with such material, coldly observing without political comment but with chilling neutrality, leaving the moral and ethical obligations firmly with the spectator.
Tahar Rahim as Salahi shows that he is one of the modern greats of film acting and his commitment to the material is never in doubt. Ever since his stunning breakout role in A Prophet, it is clear Rahim is a singular talent, a coiled intelligence that lurks behind a quiet introspective exterior; just watch the measure of control he asserts in the recent television series The Serpent and you will be checking your drinks for poison for years to come. For his role as Salahi, Rahim even allowed himself to be waterboarded and ate very little for the role and made the crew keep the cell as cold as possible. Considering the weight of the subject matter it feels churlish to suggest that his considerable talents deserve better.
And of course, there is Jodie Foster’s involvement as defence attorney Nancy Hollander. As one of Hollywood’s great American actors of the last 40 years, her involvement should add extra heft and complexity to an important story worth telling. Instead, she is reduced to a haircut and a convertible, herself redacted by blocks of script that feel like they have been struck through with the subtlety of a thick black line.