Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Harald Skogland I was so happy to read about a new production but disappointingly, this is the worst doc I've seen from A.C. He seems bent on wasting time. Quite deservedly, there's an edited, shorter version on YouTube, called the 'teacher's edit'. A.C.'s narration covers probably.. 15% or even less of the total play time. The movie is riddled with long meaningless clips and cross-cuts, which may have symbolic meaning, given the spectator's good will and imagination. What's good is how it forces the viewer to contemplate what you're watching, forcing immersion. However, the subject being the history of Afghanistan and its would-be conquerors, which the viewer most likely is uninformed on and how serious this subject is; trying to make the viewer put the pieces together himself is just an outright bad idea! The cross-cuts are close to infuriating, especially since they jump between the 70s to present day. At a handful of times, between probably hundred or more clips, the year of the current clip is displayed, as it is somehow important to know the year for this particular clip. Then there is a new clip and it might as well be 20 years prior. With most of the recordings being from low-tech Afghanistan, there are also very few visual clues to give you any idea of year. This may be argued as an interesting point in itself, but when trying to actually get hold of the history and context it's just labyrinthian. When I watch a documentary I don't want to metaphysically have a condensed experience of what is the theme of the story Curtis is telling, I want to be informed. Towards the end of the movie there's a few minutes with an interview of a young British veteran, and for a brief moment it feels like you're actually watching a documentary and not Curtis's 'Lynch-Arthaus-weirdo-masterpiece'. BTW, that's the only interview in the whole film. That's - one - 2- minute interview in a 2 hours 15 minutes documentary. (There's is also an interview with an NGO woman but I think this interview was not done by Curtis) There are a few strong and captivating scenes scattered throughout. Some are heartbreaking and memorable, especially that of a mutilated young girl wearing a dress and a birthday crown, with her father trying to cheer her up. I do -feel- I have a better understanding of Afghanistan's history from viewing this, but I believe if this was done in a more informative style I would -actually know- more and not just -feel- that I do... Kudos to Curtis for trying to experiment but this wasn't the one. I hope Curtis steps up his game on the next go.

ellenjoelle Even for an avid documentary lover this film manages to take the interest out of one of the most relevant topics of our time. I tried watching it twice but abandoned it 1.5h into the spectacle both times, because it was just annoyingly biased, simplistic content with a lot of predictable art school type 'look at my meaningful composition of clips' faffing. Incredibly hard to follow rambling type of story telling that does nothing to keep and peak the viewers attention at reasonable intervals.However, I guess it is noteworthy that at least someone is pushing the boundaries of narration and film making here.

saunderspd Bitter Lake is described as "a new, adventurous and epic film that explains why the big stories that politicians tell us have become so simplified that we can't really see the world any longer".Unfortunately this is somewhat at odds with around 20mins (if that) of explanatory content in a film with a 136min runtime and the majority of that explanatory content consists of flat statements made by Curtis. I'd hoped for 136mins of well researched dense substantiated content what I got was a childishly simple narrative spaced out with some 100+mins of beautiful footage (much of it irrelevant or unexplained). Spend 5mins on Wikipedia and you'd learn more than you would from this film...To describe this as a deep and multi-layered documentary on its subject would be as naive as taking a politician's sound-bite at face value.3 stars for the footage and soundtrack. None for the research and exposition.

tomhudgens First documentary I've tried to watch that substituted actual narration for the insertion of random video clips and annoying background music. There's just enough narration in parts I guess for it to classify as a documentary, but the complete random selection of clips and music started to drive me nuts after a while.For example, "President Karzai's Motorcade" shows on the screen, followed by a lot of shooting and the aftermath. But it comes at a fairly random point, and there are no explanations, just UFO landing music in the background.Don't get me wrong, I lasted the whole thing and some of it was very interesting, but I got the distinct impression someone is touting for awards rather than a coherent narration.