Say Anything Blog

I just finished watching the fourth and final installment of HBO’s Saddam Hussein biopic House of Saddam.  Like most HBO productions it was fairly well executed.  The acting was superb (I didn’t think it would be possible, but Yigal Naor plays a spot-on Saddam Hussein), and the challenges of crafting real-life events into a movie that is both watchable and factually sound were handled deftly.

I think for many the show may prove somewhat informative, particularly as to Saddam’s earlier years.  How he came to power, and how he became such a great enemy of America.

I was worried that, as with a lot of Hollywood attempts to cover controversial issues surrounding the war in Iraq and/or America’s foreign policy in general, we’d get skewed view of the life and times of the one-time dictator of Iraq.  I was envisioning something along the lines of Michael Moore’s kite-flying Iraqi children.

Thankfully, no such nonsense was in evidence.

That being said, I will offer up one bit of criticism: While the series can’t exactly be described as being sympathetic to Saddam, I don’t think it went nearly far enough to illustrate the monster Saddam was.  He was shown as ruthless, sure.  Murderous.  Power-mad.  But the overall depiction was more along the lines of a mob bass than a genocidal mad man.

Think Tony Soprano instead of Adolf Hitler.  Al Capone, perhaps, instead of Stalin.  Even some of the artwork for the series looks like a cover of a Sopranos box set.

And that’s unfortunate.  Saddam Hussein essentially enslaved a nation of millions while he played his ego-driven games of chicken with Iran, Kuwait, the United Nations and (ultimately to his great detriment) the United States.  He starved them while he sold international food and medical supplies for profit.  He intimidated them into giving him “election” victories with 99% of the vote.  He kept his political opposition in line with massacres.

Throughout the series, the only mention made of the massive wholes in the ground Saddam filled with his victims of genocide was done in passing during a news report.  The only time his rape and torture rooms were mentioned was when a real-life recording of President Bush was played in the background.

I understand that a biography of someone like Saddam Hussein must show all of his qualities, and that even sociopaths like him have tender moments, but by giving short-shrift to the man’s atrocities we do history a grave injustice.

Saddam’s victims deserve better than that.