SCREAMING GENOCIDE OUT OF THEIR SYSTEM
By Jim Slotek, Sun Media
Toronto Sun, Canada
June 8 2007
An odd duck of a documentary, but a powerful one, Screamers marries
a soul-shattering global concern — genocide — with the concert
film genre.
The genocide in question is the Armenian massacre of 1915 (with
stops along the way in Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur). The band:
System Of A Down, whose members are Armenian-Americans.
At first, the pairing seems gimmicky and awkward. Certainly SOAD fit
the title with their musical approach.
Lead singer Serj Tankian is actually possessed of a terrific baritone
and uses it in his songs. But there’s a sort of rule in new metal that
says the chorus must always be screamed as if you’re gargling glass.
Once your brain filters out the noise, the band’s powerful and angry
lyrics start to filter in, from songs such as P.L.U.C.K. (Politically
Lying Unholy Cowardly Killers) and Holy Mountains, with its metaphoric
allusion to Mt. Ararat — an Armenian national symbol held by Turkey.
Soon we find out that the Armenian massacre actually fuels much of
the band’s anger, making them a launchpoint for the film’s two-handed
take on the movement to get the Turkish government to fess up.
EARLY GENOCIDE
One half of Screamers is a rather more traditional, if passionately
angry, documentary.
Former BBC World News anchor Carla Garapedian assembles facts,
recollections, stomach-turning photographs and expert witness to paint
a picture of a genocide, committed before the word was even coined.
We then jump back to the band, with interviews with partying fans who
do their best to seem serious about issues that concern their heroes,
and sessions with the bandmembers themselves, fiercely talking up
their Armenian heritage.
It’s only when these two worlds begin to physically mesh that Screamers
takes flight. Tankian translates for his 95-year-old grandfather,
whose story joins that of others to paint a picture of horror.
And he turns to political street theatre, cornering then-Speaker
of the House Dennis Hastert in his Illinois district to pass on a
petition and politely chastise him for refusing to put to a vote
proposals to characterize 1915 as "genocide."
(In fact, as the movie recounts, the U.S. State Department has often
interfered when Congress has made such noises, just as the British
Parliament has gone out of its own way not to antagonize their Turkish
allies in the War On Terror.)
JOURNALISTIC COUPS
Screamers has what amounts to a couple of journalistic coups,
including interviews with Turkish dissident Orhan Pamuk (the Nobel
Prize-winner who was unsuccessfully prosecuted on the charge of
"insulting Turkishness") and Turkish journalist Hrant Dink, who was
murdered this year.
Pulitzer-winner Samantha Power (A Problem From Hell: America and
the Age of Genocide) is basically the film’s expert-in-residence,
eloquently dissecting the reluctance of Western governments to admit
that a genocide is going on, when it’s happening and after.
And for each left-brained moment, there’s an angry, emotional meltdown
from the stage (as during the song Cigaro, with screams of "My c—
is bigger than yours!" accompanied by footage of war machines taking
off and landing.)
The ideal audience for Screamers would be politically conscious System
Of A Down fans.
Non-metal fans — as concerned about genocide as they might be —
might find their role distracting, to say the least.
SCREAMERS
1 Hour, 30 Minutes
Starring: Serj Tankian, Samantha Power, Hrant Dink
Director: Carla Garapedian