The Power of Nightmares | Series | Telescope Film
The Power of Nightmares

The Power of Nightmares

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  • United Kingdom
  • 2004
  • · 1 season
  • · 60m

Creator Adam Curtis
Cast Gilles Kepel, Melvin Goodman, Stephen Holmes, William Kristol, Michael Ledeen
Genre Documentary

Is the threat of radical Islamism as a sinister, organized force of destruction a myth perpetrated by politicians across the globe in order to unite and justify empire? This series of films charts the rise of both movements, drawing comparisons between them and their origins, to provide much-needed and missing context to the War of Terror.

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What are critics saying?

100

Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman

It's a fluid cinematic essay, rooted in painstakingly assembled evidence, that heightens and cleanses your perceptions.

90

Variety by Scott Foundas

A superb, eye-opening and often absurdly funny deconstruction of the myths and realities of global terrorism that is marked by a balance, broadmindedness and sense of historical perspective so absent from many recent political-themed documentaries.

88

TV Guide Magazine by Ken Fox

It's intriguing stuff, but Curtis overplays his hand when he underplays the existence of any real threat (Madrid? London? Amman?), proposes that Al Qaeda is a fiction and risks undermining the credibility of an otherwise compelling argument.

80

Village Voice by J. Hoberman

The Power of Nightmares is essentially polemical. As partisan filmmaking it is often brilliant and sometimes hilarious-a superior version of "Syriana" (which also prudently subtracts Israel and the Palestinians from the Middle East equation).

75

New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman

Eye-opening political documentary focuses on "the strange world of violence and fear, fantasy and deception, in which we now live."

50

The New York Times by A.O. Scott

It is startling that a three-hour film dealing largely with the history of the Middle East should find no time to mention either the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the role of oil in the region. And it is more than a little unsatisfying to see the complex history of American conservatism reduced to the dreams and schemes of a handful of intellectuals.