Bitter Lake

Name: Bitter Lake
Uploaded: 2015
Duration: 2 h 17 min

20152h 17mHD★ 8.4Conspiracy & Cover-Ups

Dr.Docs' Take

Bitter Lake is Curtis unravelling the West's long, disastrous entanglement with Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, told through raw, unnarrated archival footage that will sit in your head for days. I find it his most hypnotic film and his least tidy argument, which is saying something. It is less a lecture than a fever dream about how simple stories collide with an unsimple world. Give it your full attention or none, there is no middle setting.

Adam Curtis assembles raw archive footage into a sweeping, hypnotic essay on Western involvement in Afghanistan and the roots of a conflict the official story never fully explained. Bitter Lake reaches back to the wartime pact between America and Saudi Arabia and follows its consequences through decades of intervention, ideology, and unintended chaos. Curtis argues that simplified political narratives left leaders unable to grasp the reality on the ground. Visually bold and unsettling, it is one of his most ambitious films. Free to watch in HD on Dr Documentary.

Courtesy of Adam Curtis / BBC on YouTube. Watch on YouTube ↗

ConspiracyAdam CurtisAfghanistanSaudi ArabiaPowerBBC