Continuing a narrative that he first explored in his Oscar-winning “Taxi to the Dark Side,” and the fictionalized series “The Looming Tower,” Alex Gibney’s newest documentary, “The Forever Prisoner,” is a stunning work of righteous indignation, centralizing the torture of Abu Zubaydah at the hands of the CIA. Historicizing Zubaydah, and deconstructing the myth that he was a high ranking member of al Qaeda, before showcasing his eventual imprisonment and torture, Gibney’s film is occasionally too wonkish for its own good, but, more often, it’s an infuriating dive into the ways that CIA surpassed any moral and ethical lines, all in the name of ‘freedom.’
READ MORE: The 100 Most Anticipated Films Of 2022
Named the ‘forever prisoner’ because of his limbo status at Guantanamo Bay, Zubaydah is essentially an absence within his own film, existing both as the central subject, but also a peripheral one because of Gibney’s inability to interview him. Only allowed to visit with his lawyers — despite the fact that he hasn’t been charged with any crimes — his narrative is relayed through others: his interrogators, lawyers, journalists, etc. Accompanying these discussions are drawings by Zubaydah that depict the torture he endured. As he has done with his previous films, Gibney is at his best when he is methodically constructing a timeline, deftly moving from the US’s surveillance to capture to eventual imprisonment with precision.
Further, “The Forever Prisoner” works, in some ways, as an addendum to the types of narratives that have recently attempted to sort through the moral and legal quagmires that CIA-led torture caused. Two central interview subjects are Ali Sufan, the FBI agent who interviewed Zubaydah and who was played by Tahar Rahim in the “The Looming Tower,” and Daniel Jones, the U.S. Senate Investigator who helped compile “The Torture Report” and was subsequently played by Adam Driver in the 2019 film “The Report.” While Gibney doesn’t harp on these fictionalized retellings — besides a pointed accusation at Mark Boal for his factual distortions in “Zero Dark Thirty” — the film is nevertheless acutely aware of how Hollywood and the media characterized Zubaydah and EITs (Enhanced Interrogation Techniques), more generally.
Contentiously, Gibney not only populates the film with the types of government workers that provide context, but also heavily features a series of interviews with Dr. James Mitchell, who helped create the framework for EITs (Enhanced Interrogation Techniques). Acting as a shadowy presence during Sufan’s interrogations before goading CIA officials and contractors to utilize his methods, Mitchell is both reflective of his experience with Zubaydah and unapologetic about the types of torture he inflicted on him — torture being a term that he vigorously challenges.
These interviews are the most fraught, but also the most interesting. Mitchell continuously casts himself as a voice of reason, lobbying the CIA to visit the blacksite to see what Zubaydah is going through, but he’s also the one waterboarding him so often that, as his lawyer says, he has dreams of drowning over a decade later. This isn’t even to mention the fact that Michell profited immensely off of the CIA during this time, despite having almost zero prior experience with interrogations.
When the torture eventually stops, Gibney’s film also loses its clear narrative thread. Despite its title, “The Forever Prisoner” is ultimately less interested in Zubaydah’s time at Guantanamo Bay. Perhaps because Gibney doesn’t have the access that he does in other sections, Zubaydah’s current imprisonment is the least defined, as we learn little about his present state other than his PTSD. Instead, Gibney uses Zubaydah as an on-ramp for a broader examination of the ways in which the US codified methods of torture that, ultimately, had no impact on our national security. While “The Forever Prisoner” might explore an already well-documented moment in US history, it does so with the type of archival clarity that Gibney has perfected. [B]