Best movie of this year hands down!

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

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.

This is one of the most radiant documentaries that I've seen in years. It deals with how Afghanistan was built-up by a US company in the 1950s, where dams were implemented in order to modernise the entire country. Loads of money was pumped in, but to little avail. The dams didn't work apart from generating insane levels of salt, that only allowed poppies to grow. And that's how the opium and heroin started flowing.Anyway, from the get-go, the documentary shows reality, and - lo and behold - treats the viewer as a thinking being. I wasn't sure what to expect when I saw the start of the documentary, but it's literally plastered with images from reality, and far from only shot by the film makers.The viewer is served a metaphor of Tarkovsky's "Solaris", where the protagonist - spoiler alert! - at the end of the movie no longer knows what to trust.Spoiler off! Anyway, thanks to imagery like this, we know what to know: the banks, the corporations, the governments have created the mess that Afghanistan is currently left in, a state of near-anarchy and corruption, due to its "liberators", who rather are its captors and the reason to why organisations such as IS and cliques like al- Quaida exist.See this. It's eye-opening and commendable. It breathes and lives humanity.

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 by Adam Curtis Good Intentions Adam Curtis is a good film maker. He knows how to edit and use music to great affect but it is the message in his films that are extremely troubling.The message taken from Bitter Lake (2015) is very simple.The West had nothing but good intentions with their disastrous invasion of Afghanistan. The sole reason was to spread democracy. Politicians have simply lost their way and in doing so, lost the confidence of their people. What is needed is a new story to believe in.Really? Is that it? One interview with a British Captain towards the end of the film says more about the illegal invasion of Afghanistan then the two and a quarter hours that precede it. He says, quite matter-of-factly, "Opium, that is largely what the conflict is about."Opium "Opium is a source of literally billions of dollars to extremist and criminal groups... Cutting down the opium supply is central to establishing a secure and stable democracy, as well as winning the global war on terrorism," (Statement of Assistant Secretary of State Robert Charles. Congressional Hearing, 1 April 2004) The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime acknowledged, the Taliban prohibition of opium cultivation caused "the beginning of a heroin shortage in Europe by the end of 2001″.Immediately following the October 2001 invasion, opium markets were restored. Opium prices increased and by early 2002, the opium price (in dollars/kg) was almost 10 times higher than in 2000.According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime's 2014 Afghan Opium Survey, 2014 was a bumper year for the Afghan opium cultivation as it has once again hit a record high.So how is Afghanistan's Multibillion Dollar Heroin Trade facilitated?Soviet InvasionZbigniew Brzezinski admitted CIA intervention in Afghanistan preceded the 1979 Soviet invasion.Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ("From the Shadows"), that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct? Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it? B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today? B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralisation and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists? B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war? Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998 September 11th 2001 Surely after the far superior The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear (2004), a few questions should have arisen concerning the culpability of the horrific events of September 11th 2001? Rex Tomb of the FBI's public affairs unit states, "The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Osama bin Laden's Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11." Milli Gazette, 6/11/2006In the final statement of the film, Adam Curtis limply states "What is needed is a new story and one we can believe in!" A new story? Is that all?How about these words - "What is needed is truth and people we can believe in!" Adam Curtis is apologist for the mainstream orthodox view. He asks few questions about the deeper reasoning behind these seemingly perpetual wars. He simply makes statements that exonerate criminals for their obvious crimes.