The dissent and the murder of Jamal Khashoggi

The assassination of Saudi dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 at his country’s consulate in Istanbul gave the world a terrible glimpse of the supernaturally evil side of international politics. It is not that we did not know about such a side. Over the years, we have seen wars, we have seen revelations of torture, we have seen mad narcissistic sociopaths reach the highest levels of government around the world. But there was something exceptionally unspeakable about the idea of ​​a man calmly entering his government office in another country, shaking hands, and then being strangled, dismembered and eliminated – it was as if a wormhole had opened up in another, more medieval dimension.

Of course, it was not another dimension. It turns out it’s the one we live in, and the documentary by Bryan Fogel The dissident seeks to make sense of Khashoggi’s story in the context of Saudi Arabia’s growing efforts to repress dissent, even as the country tries to open up and modernize. And the director certainly seems to have nailed it: The New York Times recently reported that Fogel, despite winning an Oscar for his previous documentary, the incendiary Russian doping scandal Icaro, hardly found buyers for The dissident among major distributors and streaming services after the film’s Sundance premiere, possibly because they feared to anger the Saudis. (The film opens on demand and opened in a small number of theaters in late December.) It certainly would have been a no-brainer for Netflix, which launched Icaro, to put out The dissident – but perhaps the company was concerned about an imminent 11-film deal with a Saudi studio, which was announced in November, and its efforts to expand in the Middle East and the Arab world. And it would have been even more of a no brainer if it was launched by Amazon, owned by Jeff Bezos, who, after all, also owns Washington Post, where Khashoggi was a contributor.

Maybe it’s just business. Which probably also applied to Khashoggi’s murder. Among the main reasons for his disagreement with the Saudi regime – after years of being a consummate insider and sometimes even a regime adviser – were his criticisms of Donald Trump, that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was eager to do more business in an effort to establish itself as a 21st century leader. It is a reminder that “modernization” doesn’t always mean progress: part of Saudi Arabia’s attempts to become a major cutting-edge power involved the use of troll farms that would overwhelm its perceived enemies on social media, and Fogel shows us how Khashoggi was swarmed mercilessly by fake accounts once he became persona non grata. While the film intersperses between various strands of Khashoggi’s story, it oscillates sharply between images of technological war in the information age and footage from Turkish authorities revealing the horrific details of the journalist’s final minutes. Below all those ones and zeros, it seems, our lizard brains are always on the move. When a stack made on Twitter doesn’t work, a bone saw solves the problem.

The dissident it can be said to have several themes, and this may be the most interesting move in the film – and, perhaps, its partial ruin. Much of the image follows Omar Abdulaziz, a young Saudi exile living in Montreal who, with Khashoggi’s spiritual and financial help, went from an unknown boy speaking on Twitter to a prominent activist who now broadcasts an extremely popular program on YouTube that many sometimes targets the Saudi regime. Abdulaziz reveals that he was also approached by Saudi agents who sought to control his work and, at one point, even suspiciously invited him to visit the country’s consulate. When he refused his demands, his family and friends in the Kingdom were arrested, some of them tortured; many of them are still in prison. (One of the most moving moments in the film is an audio recording of Abdulaziz’s terrified teenage brother, pleading with him in tears to stop opposing the Saudi regime.) Beside Abdulaziz, Fogel also follows Hatice Cengiz, Turkish bride from Khashoggi, who had to wait outside the Saudi consulate for hours while he was being slaughtered inside; the reason for visiting the consulate was because of some documents needed for the wedding. In the days and months after the murder, Cengiz became a celebrated international cause, the face of attempts to do justice to Khashoggi’s killers. (“You are not alone,” we see Bezos publicly telling her, at a memorial in Istanbul held outside the consulate a year after the murder.)

So, we have Cengiz, Abdulaziz, the rise of Saudi Arabia, the politics of the Middle East, the crime itself and its consequences, and Khashoggi’s life and career – these are many balls of history to reconcile, and Fogel doesn’t always work out in juggle them. The dissident it has powerful passages, to be sure: the murder investigation, complete with a transcript of Khashoggi’s death and interviews with Turkish officials, ranging from providing practical procedural details to expressing indignation and disgust, is particularly fascinating. But amidst all these narrative threads, Fogel occasionally loses sight of what should be the beating heart of this film: Khashoggi himself, who often emerges as an ill-defined figure with relatively ill-defined policies and views.

In fact, last fall saw the launch of other film about Khashoggi, Kingdom of silence (currently available on Showtime), which focuses more on his life and work and which actually features excerpts from his essays and articles. Kingdom of silence has its own problems – kind of has the opposite problem of The dissident in the sense that it leaves us wanting to know more about this man’s death and the global forces that surround it – but, looking at it, you have a clearer sense of the profound role that Khashoggi played in Saudi society, both in his writing (he reported from the front lines of the Afghan mujahideen war against the Soviets and even helped turn a charismatic rebel leader named Osama Bin Laden, then a US ally, into a celebrity at home) and in his work as an international contact for the government.

Possibly The dissident ignores these elements because Khashoggi’s previous work was briefly turned into a weapon after his death, while people like Donald Trump Jr. stupidly tried to portray him as a terrorist sympathizer, presumably in an effort to make excuses for Dad to spoil the government he murdered he. But Khashoggi’s journey as a journalist, columnist and insider for dissident and exile is not only crucial; it’s very moving too. Once you understand better how important he was in Saudi Arabia, you realize what it meant for him to become such a vocal opponent of the regime. In fact, the two films expose each other’s flaws, but also mitigate them. (Another example: Hatice Cengiz is almost completely absent from Kingdom of silence, which mainly focuses on Khashoggi’s two previous spouses … who are, in turn, almost completely absent from The dissident.) The films fit together like pieces of a puzzle. The best way to watch either one can be both.

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