‘The Corridors of Power’ review: Dror Moreh’s disturbing look at foreign policy failures and its most vulnerable victims | AFI FEST

Documentarian Ken Burns felt compelled to make The U.S. and the Holocaust, a documentary about the United States’ problematic response to the Holocaust and release it in 2022, probably for the same reason filmmaker Dror Moreh (The Gatekeepers) felt the need to release his latest documentary, The Corridors of Power, now. Both films tackle the same moral questions from a political perspective, and both offer not-so-silent echoes of warning, doing everything short of flashing a bright neon sign that reads, “Beware of history repeating itself.”

While both films do offer warnings of what could happen if we do not learn from past mistakes, Moreh’s film, which focuses on much more recent history, is much harder to watch, not only because it is far less distant, but because it feels much more personal. Because the events focused on in his film took place in the past thirty years, it makes every one of us complicit. And Moreh makes it impossible for us to look away.

The Corridors of Power begins near the end of World War II, with the reminder, also echoed in Burns’s film, that the United States could have done more to slow the Nazi killing machine towards the end of the war, but it didn’t. The blind eye the American government took to the existence of concentration camps began what would become a pattern of inaction on the part of the most powerful country in the world, a pattern that Moreh spells out in graphic, painful detail. Beginning when the Cold War ends in 1989, Moreh takes us through thirty years of other genocides that have been perpetrated against innocent civilians, in countries such as Serbia, Rwanda, Somalia, Kosovo, Iraq, Libya and Syria, and they are walked through in great and disturbing detail, as archival footage of the carnage and the killing (extremely graphic and uncensored) is contrasted with interviews with the people who were in the rooms where the decisions were made to act or not to act.

Morah gathers an incredibly impressive lineup of some of America’s greatest political and foreign affairs influencers and decision-makers to discuss, some with great frankness, the often impossible between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place position every American president, from Bush Sr. to Obama, was in, when faced with the existence of genocide in another country. Often referred to as the world’s policeman, America is often looked to to step in when there is injustice, to use our might to stop bullies and madmen from slaughtering innocent people, often their own. But, despite the fact that nothing on earth could seem as clear-cut as stopping a psychopath from committing mass murder, making a decision of what to do, if anything, turned out to be much more complicated.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author, former UN Ambassador and expert on human rights and genocide Samantha Power, who is featured more than anyone else in the film and serves as the film’s conscience, claims the United States has a “responsibility to protect” and to be “upstanders, not bystanders.” She used her influence as much as she could as part of the Obama administration to convince President Obama to take action against the atrocities perpetrated by Syrian strongman Assad, but even Obama, the President who believed more than any other since the end of the Cold War that we must uphold the principles of using might for right on behalf of those who are being persecuted, got lost in the morass of geo-political relationships and consequences of action, and succumbed to inertia.

It is in these political conundrums, discussed in great detail by everyone from Madeleine Albright to Colin Powell to Hillary Clinton to Henry Kissinger, that The Corridors of Power finds its footing. While it may seem clear what should always be done in the face of pure evil, there are, in fact, many considerations that need to be weighed, and each one of the dozens of interviewees, each one who has “been in the room” when these decisions have been made, makes their perspective very clear about how the actions—or inactions—of the United States came to be decided, and what their ultimate effect was.  It is truly a staggering glimpse inside those rooms, into those conversations, and why it actually matters who is sitting there.

What is far more difficult about watching The Corridors of Power is Moreh’s choice to illustrate the horrors of genocide, from Aleppo and Kosovo and Srebrenica and Rwanda and Benghazi, by showing extremely graphic archival footage of the bloodshed, the bombings, the chemical warfare, and the multitude of victims, their bodies strewn on the sides of roads, in ditches, floating in rivers, or pulled from rubble. It is extremely difficult to watch, and, while that is exactly the point, it severely tests one’s tolerance.

But Moreh’s message is nonetheless a vital one to hear. Although he stops short of mentioning the current situation in Ukraine, it is clear to anyone who has been paying attention that all the ingredients are there, as are some of the players, to prove that history will continue to repeat itself, as long as we continue this cycle of weighing political consequences against doing the right thing. Moreh’s film calls upon every person to question those in power, the choices they make, and the responsibility they have to take action. It is a very difficult, painful and disturbing film to watch, but that is exactly the point. What ever happened to “Never again?”

Grade: A

This review is from 2022 AFI FEST.