Uncle Saddam

Starring:Wallace Langham, Uday Hussein, Saddam Hussein, Qusay Hussein
Director: Joel Soler
Studio: Xenon
Product Type: DVD

Average customer rating:

Fast, Funny, Witty, and NOT Boring. Emotionally and Informationally Impacting.
excellent documentary
We got him now.
Not just mediocre: incompetent
bizarre and riveting

Uncle Saddam
Starring: Wallace Langham , Uday Hussein , Saddam Hussein , and Qusay Hussein
Director: Joel Soler
Manufacturer: Xenon
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B0000897A7
Release Date: 2003-04-01

Customer Reviews:

Fast, Funny, Witty, and NOT Boring. Emotionally and Informationally Impacting........2007-01-11

Watch the interview with the director at the end. Taken together, this is one of the films that struck me both on my ironic funny bone and also informationally and emotionally. Humor and tragedy do go together -- to protect us from the ravaging impact of tragedy. The black irony in Solzhenitsyn's 'The Gulag Archipelago' allowed me to keep reading accounts of absolute horror. Uncle Saddam keeps me laughing and helps me not to go into the depths of despondency, but it sends its message across nonetheless! And afterwards, when directer Joel Soder tells his personal tale of the production, and of the people that he interviewed who were killed after he left, the reality of what was happening hit me all the more.

I will have to see Barbet Schroeder's "Idi Amin: A Self Portrait" (which on Netflix is called "General Idi Amin Dada," to make a comparison and see if the two films were even supposed to be similar! But I, having grown up in the Middle East, had never seen or heard of everything that Joel Soder put into his documentary, and I thought the presentation was what documentaries need to be: fast, witty, and NOT boring. Because this sort of stuff matters immensely: it is all exceedingly interesting at some point, and the presentation needs to deliver the interest to its target audience.

The documentary combined with the Directors Interview: 4 stars.

excellent documentary.......2005-10-10

Uncle Saddam is a great documentary of the dictator Saddam and his terrible regime. It's funny and so true! I love the film

We got him now........2005-01-01

I say they should sodomize this guy with pork sausage links before sending him to his reward.

Not just mediocre: incompetent.......2004-12-17

This documentary is bad on so many different levels that it's difficult to know where to begin. "Uncle Saddam" is directed like a particularly egregious episode of "Hard Copy," or some other tabloid news program. The writing is simply inept: sarcastic, but not funny. In fact, no part of this documentary is remotely original. It reveals no information that hasn't already been known for years. (Surprisingly, many of Saddam's stranger idiosyncrasies are not even mentioned.) The historical overview is superficial in the extreme; the film seems to gather footage of Saddam that is already widely available; and finally, while an irreverent approach to the subject matter might be appropriate for a documentarian like Morgan Spurlock investigating the fast food industry ("Super Size Me"), such an approach seems pretty callous in a film about a murderous dictator.

The director fails in his obvious attempt to replicate Barbet Schroeder's brilliant, "Idi Amin: A Self-Portrait." Even if Soler could have secured the kind of access enjoyed by Schroeder, the sheer incompetence demonstrated by this embarrassing film makes it seem unlikely that "Uncle Saddam" would have ever lived up to the challenge. "Idi Amin: A Self-Portrait" is a cinematic masterpiece: a documentary that explores the chasm between the decorated military dictator and the human misery he causes, an inquiry into the personal psychology of those who crave political power, and, finally, a portrait of a deluded, narcissistic, sociopath. "Uncle Saddam" resembles a poorly constructed, sensationalized, dumbed-down "A&E"-style documentary about Saddam and his family.

It should go without saying that Soler makes every effort to excise those portions of history that are currently regarded as unacceptable -- those irritating facts that crop up, every so often, in the middle of articles that appear on page A19 of the NYT or Washington Post. Those interested in the history of Saddam's curious relationship with the West, as well as the eccentricities that appear to be the source of so much amusement for the other reviewers, should check out Said K. Aburish's "Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge": basically, a case study in hypocrisy. Brief articles are also widely available, together with links to the declassified documents, at the National Security Archive:

"Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein: The U.S. Tilts toward Iraq, 1980-1984"
[...]

"The Saddam Hussein Sourcebook"
[...]

Also, for an article critiquing the media's newly discovered outrage over Saddam's use of WMD, with sources cited, see:

Ackerman, Seth. "The Washington Post's Gas Attack: Today's outrage was yesterday's no big deal." EXTRA! Sept/Oct 2002
[...]

bizarre and riveting.......2004-11-13

Undoubtedly the strangest documentary I've ever seen, the footage of Saddam is more like watching a comedian do a "dictator skit" in the manner of Charlie Chaplin's Hitler, than an actual human being. In an array of ill-fitting hats, we see Saddam at rest, at play, and having lots of fun dancing. He looks totally insane, and most likely on some serious "medication". It also goes through the family tree, some of whom we are familiar with because they have graced the famous "deck of cards". Son Uday obviously either had the same genetic madness, and/or the same chemist.

French filmmaker Joel Soler risked his life to get this footage. Using the subterfuge of making a documentary on Iraqi architecture, he gained rare access into many areas not normally shown to anyone with a camera. We do get to see the many astounding, grandiose palaces, which he contrasts with the filthy conditions in the Children's Hospital, where the flies are fat, and the children skeletal.
One of the more bizarre sections is the "Saddam Art Center", which contains nothing but wall-to-wall portraits of the Evil Madman, and all the tours are led by glassy-eyed fawning subjects, full of praise for their fearless leader, and who would dutifully kiss him in his preferred spot, his armpits, which brings about Saddam's lecture on hygiene and body odors. One has to wonder how anyone retained their sanity surviving decades of this man's iron-fisted rule, and how those born under it, who have known nothing else, can learn to live in the real world.

Interspersed throughout are flashes of the true horror behind this veil of Saddam's happy Iraq, and commentary by exiled Iraqis of their experiences.
The musical choices for the soundtrack are excellent, and if you like Arabic music as I do, you'll find the score enjoyable.
This is a riveting documentary, totally unique in its presentation. A true-life black comedy, and a rare piece of filmmaking. Total running time is approximately 63 minutes.

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