American Zeitgeist tried hard to look like a serious documentary, offering a solemn procession of talking heads, impressive grainy footage of various terrorist attacks, training camps and lone Afghan warriors on cliffs overlooking desolate plains, and the now obligatory slow-mo montage of the WTC towers being hit and crumbling. While the "root causes" of terrorism were explained, the Taliban weren't applauded. Nobody in the movie hated America, they just pitied her for going astray.

However, the most frequent talking head, Tariq Ali, got at least 30% more screentime than the next, Christopher Hitchens. The sound quality in Ali's clips was excellent. Hitchens appeared to be mumbling, even when speaking from a podium. I've seen him speak twice now and he enunciates as well as Tariq Ali. The clips of Condi Rice news conferences were accompanied by significant static. So pardon me if I suspect some talking heads are more equal than others.

Conspicuous by their absence were any Coalition military in Iraq or any Iraqis, talking about conditions there. No video of Iraqis voting, or of Saddam's torture. No details on the Taliban treatment of women, only of their general subjugation of the population. No mention of the Northern Alliance war against the Taliban or its leader Ahmed Shah Masood, assassinated by Taliban in a suicide bombing three days before 9-11. Explanations of the Islamist disgust with Western "decadence" were illustrated by not one, but at least three clips of sweaty club kids groping each other under pulsing disco lights, to a techno beat. I thought they were pretty disgusting too, but the difference between me and the Taliban is that I wouldn't round them up, beat them with electric cables, and bury them alive, and that distinction was not explored. There were also weird clips of really bad East Village performance artists (presumably McGann's friends). I couldn't tell if their purpose was to illustrate more Western decadence, or passionate dissent from the corrupt neocon war machine.

The most "neocon" or "rightwing" talking head was David Frum (in his capacity as Bush's speech writer) and he didn't get much screen time. There was a short clip of Bush announcing the beginning of the war to the American public, but no clips from any speeches where he articulately explained the reasons for it, such as his September 2002 speech before the UN. A film taking issue with those reasons ought to let their author describe them first, to be fair. But American Zeitgeist wasn't even honest enough to admit it was slanted.

Most fun moment: Right after the clip of Bush announcing the war, there was spontaneous applause, not only from our little gang, but from someone on the other side of the auditorium as well. (We never found out who that person was.) Whence arose several anguished wails from the center section of the auditorium, presumably upon realizing that Right Wing Death Beasts had invaded their sacred space.