Six Greg Barker films from 2011-2017 lit up screens and transfixed audiences across the open-armed town of Missoula at the 15th annual Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in February. Barker’s body of work deftly pries the lid off of that messy jar of what we think we know about the world, and about ourselves. How we enter and exit our relationships says alot about the profusion of currents and pressures that shape our lives and emboss the inner chronicle of our identity, and Barker’s films ride the waves of those currents, awakening filmgoers specifically to the purgatorial relationship between the United States and the Middle East. By sailing the tides that push and pull the cultural giants, Barker’s signature style of subtle revelation call to mind pronouncements from the prolific Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, who underscored that “the job of the artist is to bring problems to light, but everybody has a responsibility to contemplate them.”
In Koran by Heart (2011) Barker meets audiences where they are, because whether one is intimately familiar with the pace, rhythm, and nuances folded into countries in the Middle East, or whether these are viewed as strange worlds unseen and not understood from the 24/7 news machine, Barker captures families who are grappling with their faith, and its place, in the world. The film follows the voyages of 110 children from 70 countries as they participate in a Koran reciting contest in Cairo, Egypt during the holy month of Ramadan. Brought to the surface are the expectations of young men and women. One contestant, Rifda, aspires to explore the ocean. Navigating her studies with tenacity and ease, she is at the top of her class, and her father’s expectation is that she will be an educated housewife. When she leaves the Maldives for the first time, she is terrified to leave home but does it anyway; the world is calling. Nabiollah, an illiterate young man full of promise, was educated in a religious school later closed for fundamentalism concerns. His family hopes he will eventually learn several languages for his empowerment. The imbalance presented here is a meditation on the homeostasis, or lack thereof, of seen and unseen powers that shape lives. Throughout the contest, our central characters from Senegal, the Maldives, and Tajikistan recite from memory verses assigned to them from the Koran. These children by and large do not understand the language they speak so eloquently, so in tune with their own little wondrous rhythms. Their education is rooted in rote and memorization, and thus curiosity abounds about how we end up following a certain rhythm, which rituals and what kinds of structure give us a container for an expansive experience, and which constrict us?
Manhunt: The Inside Story of the Hunt for Bin Laden (2013) is a portal into the intelligence world, a story of mostly women who tracked Osama bin Laden, providing warning after warning about an impending attack (9/11), and were ignored and discarded by bureaucracy. These women possess an unparalleled acumen for analysis. If they were male, would the exceptional quality of their composure, rigorous investigation, and sense of urgency for their counterparts to act be met with “you’re too emotional?” If these analysts were men, would Congress have blamed them for negligence, for failing to connect the dots? The insidious and obvious expressions of toxic masculinity are embedded at every level. It’s tiresome, it’s unreasonable, and it has cost the United States. In unpacking the “war on terror” one of the analysts says, “terror is a tactic, the war is on people. So the question immediately becomes who are the people that we're fighting the war against?” The irony here is that these women had a solid grip on what was coming without being listened to. This speaks volumes about communication and discourse in general, further elucidated by General Stanley McChrystal, “The thing to understand is why are the people doing what they’re doing? Why is the enemy the enemy? We don’t speak the language enough. We don’t understand the culture. We haven’t taken the time to not be blind, deaf, and dumb in areas that matter to us.”
Legion of Brothers (2017) tracks the Green Berets who overthrew the Taliban, and the film follows a direct action team and their responses to brotherhood, the error in glorifying war, the suppression of emotions, and the seeds of destruction. The film resembles a slow dissolution into the raw elements of masculinity. Where can sense of duty, brotherhood, and testosterone find balance without bleeding into toxic masculinity? Our hypersensitivity to, or disengagement from, the fact that we are animals, has little bearing on its truth.The ebbs and flows rolling between our upper and lower brains create vortexes that can be difficult to manage. Military training pushes so far back against the lower brain for purposes of control that men often express that they leave the military with a limited, dulled, or suppressed capacity to fully experience the spectrum of human emotion. If not that, then it’s a journey to find the way back, especially after incurring and experiencing incomprehensible loss. One Green Beret shares, “As a kid, I was forced to read Homer’s "Odyssey," you know, about a warrior king trying to come home and the family going through its situation. You never really understand it, because you don't have the maturity. Now, you know, and you're trying to find the subtleties and calmness of life. That, right now, is more valuable than a million dollars in the bank.”
At his BSDFF masterclass, Barker shared that his most recent film, The Final Year (2017), is a look at the “human dimensions in a ticking clock” and that it “felt like a band movie.” The film pulls the curtains back on President Barack Obama’s foreign policy team as they make their final pushes to create a lasting impact. The team’s wish was to make current government policy harder to dismantle in the case of an unanticipated turn of events. As the U.S. is currently couched in that ditch, it’s truly astounding to observe how some changes proceed at a glacial pace, and others gain ground at the speed and inanity that can only come from a virus inflicted tweet. Barker did not want this film to be a definitive account of the Presidency, but “an experiential journey into a bubble.” Indeed what The Final Year does is send out a reminder that nothing is absolute. What’s hopeful about that, is that perhaps the rapid erosion of discourse in the U.S. can be remedied, and the role that documentary film can play in that is vital. Barker’s view is that “our national story is broken and I don't think the media is helping. This is a golden age for documentary film--we need filmmakers crafting intelligent narratives of the world and I think people are hungry for it beyond typical news sources.”
In Greg Barker’s body of work there is much being said. What’s really compelling though, about film, about life, about his work, is what’s not being said. Our behavior patterns are softly impressed and hollowed out as if they were slow, steady, drops of water. Innocuous until they aren't, the regularity of these small rappings form our identity. If we’re lucky, these rappings are complicated by surges of power that blast open new insights about who we are. Once we are awakened to them, we can explore the nature of these patterns, which possess the leverage to transform our individual and collective tides. If we are willing to listen, we can find the quality, control, and rhythm in our presence, in our entrances and exits, we can unearth and hitch a ride to the inner chronicle of our identity. The organization and the disruption of patterns are an intrinsic element in the chaos and order of nature. The earth responds as needed. In looking at what’s not being said, the question thrust upon audiences for contemplation, is, do we?