“The forces involved here are less visible than gunfire, class ownership or political crusades, but they are no less powerful, “says Raoul Peck in his new documentation. Exterminate all brutes, premiering on April 7 on HBO.
The critically acclaimed filmmaker is referring to the series of myths that make up white supremacy, the theme of the four-part series that explores the brutal methods and ideological justifications of Western colonization. In his latest project, Peck reapplies experimental techniques from his 2016 Oscar-nominated documentary about writer and activist James Baldwin, I’m not your black, to challenge our collective understanding of America as a powerful nation and commonly labeled “big”
Exterminate all brutes it is full of reports of historical events, such as the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Anglo-Powhatan Wars and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, told in a direct and poetic way by Peck, who also serves as a unique narrator, as well as a writer and director. Like its previous documentary, the series is also talking to literature, cinema and other works of art that have been influential in denouncing or spreading false narratives about colonialism and non-white populations, including Sven Lindqvist’s 1992 nonfiction book, of which the series takes its name (it is also a line from the soap opera by Joseph Conrad Heart of darkness, which is mentioned in the series).
In the first part of the documentation, entitled “The Disturbing Confidence of Ignorance”, Peck speaks admirably of his late Swedish historian friend, who died in 2019, as he appears in archival footage working in an office. Lindqvist’s desire and willingness to discover the horrors of colonialism through a journey through the Sahara Desert, the subject of his acclaimed book, serves both as inspiration for Peck in his current research and as a model for productive interracial relations – even though all whites were so eager to question their position in the world.
Likewise, Peck spends most of the documentary emphasizing the importance of knowing the truth of white supremacy, particularly the use of genocide in the establishment of African and American colonies, rather than providing a roadmap for decolonization. This approach will presumably attract viewers who are grappling with this issue for the first time and want to learn about significant events in world history in a relatively short period of time.
It is easy to imagine this series appearing on anti-racist watch lists if it had premiered before last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests. But for those who consider themselves knowledgeable about our colonial past and understand how these stories fit into current conversations about the removal of Confederate monuments or the end of capitalism or the abolition of the police, Peck’s claims throughout the series that we are ” losing “” courage “to” Draw conclusions “from the past, or that the dominant historical narratives” need to be challenged “, as if he were one of the few to do this publicly, may seem patronizing and out of touch with the work of non-historians whites and current political movements led by people of color around the world.
That said, I’m not sure I would recommend Exterminate all brutes for someone who is delving into the subject for the first time, despite the introductory nature of the series. Peck’s excursions through different periods and parts of the globe, not to mention the countless list of politicians and military leaders that are briefly mentioned and never spoken of again, are difficult to follow and even retain after a few minutes, as the series goes from one invasion to the next without establishing connections between these incidents of violence. It is especially disorienting considering that, in the first episode, Peck provides his audience with a set of basic terms that “summarize the entire history of mankind” – civilization, extermination and experimentation. He does not abandon these terms, but it would be useful for viewers if he tried to categorize the information in this way, as well as following the designated topic of each specific episode, from which he often deviates.
Peck’s experimental impulses, which are at least captivating, also hinder coherence. We are inundated by a wide variety of movie clips from In the city for Raiders of the Lost Ark for the wolf of Wall Street, illustrations, animated maps and graphics that move at an indecipherable pace, paintings, home videos of Peck’s childhood in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and the Democratic Republic of Congo and fictional reconstructions. Many of these segments are accompanied by Peck’s monotonous narration that viewers may find irritating, since there are no talking heads. But it is the dramatizations in particular, especially the interactions between white and black and indigenous settlers, that seem especially fruitless and out of place within the documentary.
“But it is the dramatizations in particular, especially the interactions between white and black and indigenous settlers, that seem especially fruitless and out of place within the documentary.“
In the third episode, “Killing at a Distance or … How I Enjoyed the Tour”, which begins by explaining the role of armament in imperialism, we spent several minutes watching a fictional enslaved woman undressing a settler (played by Josh Hartnett) and giving him a bath. After hearing a woman start howling outside, she looks out the window to see four black men dead, Hartnett’s character has just lynched. This is the totality of the scene, and it is not clear what we should extract from it in relation to the theme of the episode or as an autonomous vignette. Likewise, the rest of the reenactments are poorly conceived and underwritten, including an embarrassingly cliche rereading of blacks enslaving whites. Others, with free graphic representations of black and indigenous death, feel that Peck is holding a specific section of his audience and disregarding viewers who do not need to view, say, an indigenous woman being shot and experiencing additional horrible violence after her death to believe that this kind of brutality has occurred.
Standing out in all this disorder are the mesmerizing images of Peck’s childhood in Haiti, which add an element of intimacy and warmth to a rather dark film. I was admittedly more interested in how Peck’s education in Haiti (and education later in Berlin) shaped his worldview. In the second part of the documentary, he talks briefly about his fascination with the pomp and circumstance of Catholicism as a child and his disillusionment with religion after receiving a beating from a priest at his school. Peck addresses the interrelationship between violence and religion with regard to the Crusades and how Europeans labeled non-Christians as savages, but not in direct relation to this story, which is left as a loose end. Still, Peck’s voice as a writer feels more confident and relaxed in these autobiographical parts of the film, while when he is editorializing historical events, he can become breathless and stiff.
In its early stages, Exterminate all brutes it was supposed to be a 15-part series. I can’t say if a greater amount of time would have helped Peck’s project to appear more or less congested and confused. One thing is certain is that it is impossible to expose the horrible truth of colonization without naming sexual violence as the main instrument of oppression. Surprisingly, Peck’s documentation only alludes to non-consensual relationships between white settlers and black, indigenous, and Asian women (Lindqvist also fails to articulate the ramifications of gender violence in his book), despite the reliance of European rape colonists to terrorize communities. and defend slavery. In the year 2021, this kind of oversight just looks like a wipe.