MOVIE REVIEW

 

Persons of Interest

 

BY JOHN ANDERSON

STAFF WRITER

 

September 3, 2004

 

Uncharged people, unchecked authority: Testimony of a dozen post-9/11 detainees of Mideast origin, taken in strikingly formalist style. Directed by Alison MacLean and Tobias Perse. Also on program: "Through the Wire" and "Getting Through to the President." 1:23. At Cinema Village, Manhattan.

 

There's no misinterpreting the symbolism, or distancing power, of the white-walled room in which so much of the powerful, anger-provoking documentary "Persons of Interest" unspools. It may not be prison itself, but it certainly serves as a cell - one in which the entirety of the U.S. Constitution could fit comfortably, given only a few alterations, violations and virtual amputations.

 

All of which have taken place, according to this unfortunately nonfictional account - 12 accounts, to be precise, by Arab immigrant detainees. Co-directors Tobias Perse and Alison Maclean ("Crush," "Jesus's Son," "Sex and the City") film all their subjects against the coldly lit walls of a whitewashed stage set, a single window to the left, a waiting-room bench on the right. The subjects, all arrested after Sept. 11, 2001, face the camera, as if pleading their case. The only conclusion left to draw is that, given the detainees' plight and the immigrant policies of Attorney General John Ashcroft (seen several times, justifying injustice), we, the audience, have become the court of last resort.

 

The cases push the film into the realm of science fiction. Palestinian-American Nabel Ayesh, stopped while driving on Sept. 11, identified himself to an officer as Israeli. '"Are you Jewish?' he asked me. 'No,' I said, 'I'm Arabic.' 'You're under arrest.'" Another man is arrested in Buffalo for the crime of sitting in an overdue rental car; a third is arrested while working his job on the Queensborough Bridge, on the basis of an anonymous tip (96,000 such tips were received by authorities in the first week after Sept. 11, we're told; none of the 5,000 Muslims subsequently detained has been charged with a Sept. 11-related crime).

 

It becomes a bit hard to believe how pro-American the subjects remain, given their incarcerations, denial of counsel, separation from family and abuse at the hands of perhaps well-intentioned, but jurisprudentially inept, representatives of a nation of immigrants. "We were living the American dream," you hear repeatedly, but as so many Japanese- Americans discovered during World War II, dreams can be interrupted by other people's nightmares.

 

"Persons of Interest" doesn't pretend to be anything but an advocacy film, but then, no one in the government has apologized to the unindicted or admitted that its policy of arrest-first, answer- questions-later has been anything but criminal. The film is also mercifully brief - how much can an American take of this stuff? - but is accompanied by two shorts: "Getting Through to the Preside nt," a lightweight gag film by Sarah and Emil Kunstler about New Yorkers calling the White House comment line (which involves many quarters, much time and little satisfaction). And "Through the Wire," a nonstop, frenzied, verite account of the assault on Australia's Woomera detention facility on Good Friday, 2002, by 1,000 Australian activists. What the film asks, in its kinetic fashion, is why, or even how, citizens will respect the law when the law has seemingly gone on vacation.