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THE TRIALS OF HENRY KISSINGER Send This Review to a Friend
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger gets a searing going over in a documentary that relies heavily on Christopher Hitchens's book "The Trial of Henry Kissinger." The film raises the question of whether Kissinger should be tried for crimes against humanity and builds a case against him based on his relationship to events in Chile, Cambodia, Vietnam and East Timor. In this work that was part of the Toronto International Film Festival 2002 and has opened at the Film Forum in New York, the theory is suggested that if a Pinochet could be arrested abroad, why not Kissinger? The current U.S. administration's refusal to become part of international law that might reach Americans whom the world would like to hold responsible in court has a relationship to what is being charged against Kissinger in this film directed by Eugene Jarecki and produced by Alex Gibney and Jerecki, with the writing credited to Gibney.
Plenty of homework has been done to put this docu-indictment together, and it is as informative as it is accusatory. I must admit to having a bias against Kissinger, and every time he is called as an expert on television, I gag at the authority bestowed upon him as a so-called expert. My feelings are tied to the slaughter he was part of in Vietnam and certainly to the overthrow of Allende in Chile, which documents show to have had U.S. involvement.
What's most important about the film at this particular time is not just holding Kissinger up to the spotlight, but the raising of issues that could be very relevant to future military adventures in Iraq. To what extent can heads of state and cabinet officials be responsible for actions that lead to mass killings of civilians? Are they exempt because it is warfare against a country or terrorists? Can international courts hold them accountable as was done after World War II and as is being done now after Bosnia?
America has long considered its leaders exempt from such trials because their actions have always been cloaked in state policy carried out in the belief that they were justified. But much is being challenged internationally these days, and "The Trials of Henry Kissinger," in addition to being well researched and provocatively presented, has special relevance.
A First Run Features release.
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