Alex Gibney: interview

Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney talks to Time Out about his latest documentary, the excellent 'Taxi to the Dark Side'

‘Taxi to the Dark Side’ is about an innocent Afghan taxi driver who is captured, tortured and killed. How did you first come across the subject?
'I read about the central story in the New York Times. It was a story that had these various tentacles to connect all sorts of different parts of the US interrogation and detention system which was spinning out of control. There was something that haunted me about the story in the next-to-last paragraph: it was a five-day interrogation, and after the third day they concluded Dilwar [the taxi driver] was innocent but continued to beat him until he died. That momentum of torture raised a haunting mystery that I thought would be powerful enough to explore in a film.'

You’ve said one of the reasons you made this film is that you thought there was a lack of popular activism, a lack of people reading these things and wanting to do something about it. Is that the case?
'Yes. I’m dismayed at the fact that more people aren’t upset at what’s going on to be honest. I think it is in part that we live in small suburban communities here in the US and there are some people who think we’re ‘safe’ now. I think to some extent the Bush administration has run on a campaign of torture. They don’t use the word, but the implication is there. It’s distressing, and the people who say they are upset don’t seem to be making a ruckus. We come to accept it, which is the most distressing thing of all.'

It also feels like a film which addresses the faults of human behaviour.
'I agree, and that’s what I’m into it for. While I’d say my films are political, they’re more than that. They look at fundamental human behaviour and even though I would hope that "Taxi…" would be an agent provocateur to people in a political sense, I don’t make films to influence a political bill or enact a particular law because I think sometimes films play a different role in that.'

Political documentaries often deploy very extreme imagery to get their point across. Do you think that’s important part of making these types of films?
'It depends on the subject. By and large, films tend to deal in extreme behaviour, whether they’re documentary or fiction. I think it's the exaggeration that makes us see something truthful about human behaviour, whether that’s comedy or drama or whatever. With this subject in particular, part of what we’re getting at is the truth of the matter, so these images of Abu Ghraib and Bagram, which are horrifying and difficult to watch, are necessary. And we didn’t even put the worst of them in…'

How do you make the call on how extreme to go?
'It’s partially a gut call. We wanted to be clear, but we didn’t want it to be so brutal that people’s minds snapped off. The famous photographer Margaret Bourke-White took a series of photos of the concentration camps after WW2, and while she took some photos of the bodies piled up, she didn’t feel those could be revealed, that there were much more powerful pictures that revealed people living, peeking out behind barbed wire, thin and desperate looking, but still with a connection to humanity. Sometimes if you go too far, you loose the effect.'

Your films seem to display a distrust of society’s upper echelons.
'That’s probably more of a personal thing. There’s an expression here “to succeed you suck up and kick down”, and I’ve spent my career kicking up and sucking down, which probably accounts for my lack of advancement into the corporate world. I think that’s the role of the documentary maker, to question people in power, and to wonder if they’re using their power wisely, and if they’re telling the truth or lying? The fact is with that power comes responsibility, and if isn’t used responsibly, we have an obligation to say something about it.'

When you’re making a film like ‘Taxi…’, are you thinking of what’s going to get the audience in, or just making the best and most rigorous documentary you can?
'I always think about the audience. In "Taxi..." I tried very hard to create a murder mystery; its not done as a report, there have been other TV documentaries on this subject and they treat it as a report. I tried to find key characters and identify them and treat it structurally as a narrative film even though its a documentary. By engaging in that mystery and storytelling you can give the audience a satisfaction that they otherwise wouldn’t get if it was a flat report.'

You’ve recently completed a film about Hunter S Thompson. Why him?
'It was a story bought to me; it seemed that there was a missing voice in journalism now that Hunter has gone, and that voice was of someone who refused to play by the journalistic rules. Hunter embodied the split personality of the American character; his writing was wicked and dark but very funny. He was an idealist who also had a cynical view of things. So all that about Hunter I like, but the drugs and alcohol are probably not to like.'

'Taxi to the Dark Side' is released in cinemas on June 16 and on DVD on the June 30.

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