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| EG THE AGE December 11, 1998 Waco: The Rules of Engagement
When this film played to a near-full house at the Forum cinema during the Melbourne International Film Festival there were long spells when the audience sat frozen as the film revealed the truth about what happened to David Koresh and members of the Branch Davidian sect at Waco, Texas, in 1993. Ghostly footage of the siege taken from a high-altitude surveillance aircraft showed in astonishing detail the nature of the US Government's operation against the sect. Armored vehicles methodically punched holes in the com pound to provide proper ventilation for a fire, Men fired machine guns to keep people from escaping. What makes director William Gazecki's and producer Dan Gifford's exhaustively researched and resourced film so compelling is that we think-we know pretty much all there is to know about that fire, in which 76 people perished. Images were seared into our minds through repetition in the mass media: the flaming buildings; the government agent dodging for his life as bullets tear through a wall; the ungroomed face of Koresh, the dangerous, psychotic cult leader who caused it all, happy to see women and children die for his beliefs. This impression, the film demonstrates; was fractured and selective, largely the result of a compliant media. In The Rules of Engagement, however, Gazecki and Gifford deliberately go against the common media practice of brevity and easy answers. The retelling of what happened at Waco is presented without sensation or anger. It simply assembles the evidence, including much material never before shown, such as conversations between Koresh and a double-talking official. Documentaries that seek to attack the establishment are often badly done. The Oscar- winning The Panama Deception (1992) by Barbara Trent about the US invasion of Panama was a good example of a bad documentary containing much argument, rhetoric and innuendo, but little real evidence. In sharp contrast, The Rules of: Engagement is full of facts, figures and footage to back its claim about an unconstitutional attack on a bunch of marginalised people who did not deserve the fate they were dealt. Indeed, the film berates the workings of the media and government ๖or at least the ATF (the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms)๖it seeks to remind Americans about that bit in their constitution about freedom of religion. |
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