Terror's Advocate again.

Simply because a few strong pieces have appeared recently, yet one more entry on Barbet Schroeder's Terror's Advocate, which "frames [Jacques] Vergès's story as a mirror of the recent history of terrorism in Europe, with attention to all of the ambiguity that term implies," writes Stephen Beachy in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. "If one person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter and the term itself a strategy to disparage the warfare of those without governments, it doesn't follow that every act of terror is ethically equivalent."

"Terror's Advocate has little to tell us about the moral universe of those who defend the horribly evil, simply because Vergès has little to say about morality," writes Dahlia Lithwick in Slate. "But in introducing us to a lawyer who thinks of the law simply as great theater - something to be enjoyed with a good cognac and a cigar - the film is devastating.... He is every ethical lawyer's worst nightmare. And every terrorist's dream."

Updated through 11/7.

And she points to Daphne Merkin's piece for the New York Times Magazine: "Barbet Schroeder has referred to Vergès as a 'perverse and decadent aesthete,' and yet his decision not to take an overt position in the film is precisely what makes it so unnerving."

More from Tamara Straus in the San Francisco Chronicle, where, on that same page, you'll also find quick reviews of King Corn, Have You Heard from Johannesburg? Apartheid and the Club of the West, The Price of Sugar and The Gates.

Earlier: Reviews from mid-October, David D'Arcy's interview with Schroeder and reviews from Cannes.

Update, 11/7: "What does Barbet Schroeder think of Vergès, who speaks smugly and comfortably before the filmmaker's camera?" asks Gerald Peary in the Boston Phoenix. "(He might remind you of Robert McNamara reminiscing chummily with Errol Morris about Vietnam in The Fog of War.) Schroeder's point of view isn't very clear. We know from the films he's made about Idi Amin and Barbie that he's fascinated with the faces of evil. Is that preoccupation enough?"

Posted by dwhudson at November 2, 2007 4:03 PM