BBC documentary film by filmmaker Adam Curtis
Politicians used to have the confidence to tell us stories that made sense of the chaos of world events. But now there are no big stories and politicians react randomly to every new crisis – leaving us bewildered and disorientated.
Bitter Lake is a new, adventurous and epic film by Adam Curtis that explains why the big stories that politicians tell us have become so simplified that we can’t really see the world any longer.
The narrative takes in events in America, Britain, Russia and Saudi Arabia – but the country at the heart of it is Afghanistan. Because Afghanistan is the place that has confronted our politicians with the terrible truth – that they can no longer understand what is going on.
The film reveals the forces that over the past 30 years rose up and undermined the confidence of politics to understand the world. And it shows the strange, dark role that Saudi Arabia has played in this.
But Bitter Lake is also experimental. Curtis has taken the unedited rushes of almost everything that the BBC has ever shot in Afghanistan – and used them in new and radical ways.
In so doing, he builds a different and more emotional way of depicting what has happened in Afghanistan – a counterpoint to what he sees as the narrow and increasingly destructive stories told by those in power.
Against the Grain 