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It was a chain of events, really, that led Sig Libowitz to make a gripping, 30-minute courtroom drama about some of the thorniest questions to crop up in the war on terror.
Thursday, October 22, 2009 by STEVE SEBELIUS
[This story has been changed from its original version to correct errors.]
It was a chain of events, really, that led Sig Libowitz to make a gripping, 30-minute courtroom drama about some of the thorniest questions to crop up in the war on terror.
First, of course, the Sept. 11 attacks. Then, the American response, invading Afghanistan, where the terrorists who planned the violence were based. Then, the invasion of Iraq. The United States captured alleged terrorists all around the world, and sent them to a prison built on the southern tip of Cuba, where the U.S. Navy maintains a base at Guantanamo Bay.
Libowitz, an actor (The Sopranos, Law & Order) and filmmaker, just happened to be attending the University of Maryland law school, and just happened to sign up for a class on homeland security law. In the curriculum, he happened upon some of the transcripts of hearings that took place in Cuba, held to determine if the detainees incarcerated there had been properly classified as terrorists. That sparked an interest, both legal and dramatic, that culminated in making The Response after he graduated from law school.
"It really just blew me away," says Libowitz, who showed his film recently at UNLV's Boyd School of Law, kicking off a panel discussion of the issues presented in the film. "I just thought it was so fascinating. It's real human drama. It's who we are as a country."
A summary: A Muslim detainee, played by Aasif Mandvi of The Daily Show, has been held for years at Guantanamo Bay, without being charged, without the right to counsel and without being able to challenge his detention. He's finally afforded a hearing before a three-judge panel, two Army colonels played by Kate Mulgrew (Star Trek: Voyager) and Peter Riegert (Animal House) and a young captain, played by Libowitz himself. (Libowitz also wrote the screenplay, hewing as closely as he could to the actual transcripts of the hearings.)
Mandvi's character is frustrated: His interrogators won't tell him who has accused him of collaborating with al-Qaida terrorists. The panel says it cannot reveal the intelligence behind his detention, lest it reveal critical sources to the enemy. So how is the alleged terrorist supposed to defend himself?
Meanwhile, Libowitz's character -- fresh from front-line duty as a lawyer -- is haunted by an incident in which he tried to help an Iraqi citizen on an errand that cost fellow soldiers their lives. And wouldn't you know it, with the two senior officers divided, the decision on whether to release the detainee comes down to Libowitz.
The drama isn't easy to watch. While the audience feels for Mandvi's character, it also doesn't entirely trust him. And while the profoundly unfair task of answering anonymous charges and explaining murky accusations is bound to offend, the specter of Sept. 11 is never far from the panel's minds, or the audience's. Releasing a terrorist could end up splattering American blood on the panel's hands.
"I decided to do something radical," Libowitz says. "I decided to trust the audience."
But is that wise? In our still-divided nation, where some simply don't care about what happens in the faraway Caribbean so long as we're safe here at home, how can we trust anybody?
"We right now are walking on a line. Where we fall on that line determines our response," said Libowitz, who emphatically says the movie has no agenda to persuade, but only to educate. "I wanted a successful courtroom drama," he says, not a polemic.
In that, he's gotten his wish. The Response has been accepted into seven Academy Award-qualifying film festivals, which means it's got a shot at an Oscar for short films. (The downside: It can't be widely distributed yet.) Another accolade: It won the American Bar Association's 2009 Silver Gavel award, which in the past has gone to films such as 12 Angry Men and To Kill A Mockingbird.
While The Response is short on length -- it was limited because of money -- it sacrifices nothing in terms of breadth. "I had a checklist of issues I wanted to see represented. They hit every single one," says UNLV Boyd law school professor Christopher Blakesley, who'd seen the film before its Boyd debut. "I was very pleased with it. They did a very good job."
For Blakesley, who teaches humanitarian law as well as criminal procedure, the film highlighted an age-old dilemma: "How do we protect ourselves while being what we think we are?"
"People can be worked up into fear," he says. "At least, over time, what are we doing to ourselves? That's really the most profound and dreadful question."
That question doesn't just refer to the possibility of creating a terrorist out of an innocent man who's been locked up for years without just cause, Blakesley says. It also refers to the way we make policy, the compromises we make with our own values, and the fear we allow into the process we use to make decisions about war and peace.
So what's the answer? The Response walks a narrow line in refusing to answer, putting the judges' dilemma on the audience. And while Mulgrew's and Reigert's characters argue the case, Libowitz is the stand-in for the audience, forced to weigh both sides.
Gerald Bierbaum, a deputy federal public defender, says the film did a good job of depicting the process, which he argues isn't fair to detainees. A "personal representative" (who is not a lawyer) is there only to help the detainee navigate the proceedings. Anything a detainee says must be reported to the judges. By contrast, a prosecutor in the American criminal justice system would never be able to learn information a defendant tells his lawyer because of the attorney-client privilege.
"When we explain the detainee process that we're litigating, most people say, 'Dang, that's unfair,'" Bierbaum says.
ACLU of Nevada General Counsel Allen Lichtenstein, who also attended the screening at Boyd and introduced the panelists afterwards, called the film "disturbing."
"It's disturbing because it shows what kind of Kafkaesque process that was going on," he says. "The more you really look at how this has taken place, you realize that once government thinks it can do away with due process, it's not a slippery slope, it's a steep drop."
Still, The Response has been screened at the Pentagon, the Justice Department, Harvard University and next year at Harvard and Columbia universities, too. And while the ACLU and Amnesty International were represented at the Boyd screening, the film also appeals to national-security types and military members, simply because it takes no sides. Libowitz says Riegert summed it best: "It's a movie about questions."
"We tried to be provocative down the middle," he says. "There's too much demonization" of people because of their views on these subjects, he says.
Along with a riveting story, tight writing and difficult issues, credit The Response with this: It shows the real demons lurk everywhere.
For more information, see The Response's website: www.theresponsemovie.com/The_Response_Movie/Welcome.html.
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