House Of Saddam, a compelling drama for 91Èȱ¬ Two, charting the rise and fall of a dictator
Background
It was while he was researching events in Fallujah in April 2003 – the start of the insurgency against the coalition forces occupying Iraq – that co-writer and director Alex Holmes first conceived the idea of House Of Saddam.
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"The more I looked into the history of this conflict, the more I realised how little I understood about the man at its heart, and why he had pursued the courses of action he had," says Alex. "I was 22 when Saddam invaded Kuwait, and just beginning my career as a journalist. Now in hindsight I realised that without understanding the man, it was impossible to understand his actions or much that followed."
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As Alex began looking into the life of the man who most of the world knew only as a feared dictator, it soon became clear that his was an important story to tell, and that drama was going to be the best medium through which to unravel the layers of his private and political life.
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"The rise to absolute power and the long tragic fall of a man who has done more than most to influence the course of recent world events is an important historical story to tell," he says.
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"But what made it even more important as a story was the opportunity to present a character study of a dictator: a powerful charismatic man who had a vision for his country, and himself, but who through a combination of the forces ranged against him and flaws in his own character took himself and the nation he controlled into tragedy and ruin.
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"Saddam was a complex man with many qualities as well as flaws. A drama seemed the only adequate way to examine the complexity of his nature, with whom many Iraqis had such an ambivalent relationship involving respect and loathing."
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Alex and his team spent almost two years interviewing those who knew, worked with and witnessed Saddam and the people within his world.
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The nature of the programme he wanted to make required them to cast their research net far and wide, in order to get to the man behind the headlines.
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"We were determined to try and tell the story of Saddam from the inside out, from the perspective of the inner circle," says Alex. "We could not take a single source as the basis for our drama and remain true to the story.
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"This propelled us to go further and talk to people who knew Saddam first hand, those who had worked for him, those who had supported him and those who had suffered under him."
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A wide range of people were interviewed; from political allies to political opponents, from bodyguards to palace cooks, from childhood friends to those who had contact with him in his last days.
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"In short we talked to anybody who might shed light on his character," says Alex. "One of the remarkable things about so many of the people we talked to was how many of them were convinced they had a special relationship with Saddam: 'others lied to him, only I was able to tell him the truth… he trusted me' was something we heard time and time again.
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"What fascinated me about this was that Saddam had the power to instil this sensation in people; he had political charisma."
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Questions were even sent to Saddam himself while he was in prison, through his lawyer. While the team didn't receive a reply, they were able to access other key players in Saddam's regime, such as the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, who answered questions through his lawyer.
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Getting as close to the truth as possible was vital to Alex and his team, which meant a long process of distilling the information gathered through the research.
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"Our aim was to draw on as much of the research as possible and fairly represent this in the drama. Perhaps not surprisingly there were many different versions of the same events.
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"Some of these were the result of poor history or poor recollection, but others were motivated by attempts to airbrush history, or the attempts of an individual to paint others in a worse light, while excusing their own actions.
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"In all of this it was our responsibility to pick our way through these accounts to find the most consistent and plausible – by which I mean not in contradiction of well-established facts – versions of events.
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"One of the most significant things about this story was there was certainly no need to add or heighten the drama – the events and characters are themselves sufficiently dramatic."
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Bringing the script to life is a cast of talented actors drawn from all over the world – the result of casting calls in four continents.
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Alex says of Igal Naor: "I knew from his first audition that Igal was our Saddam, and his portrayal has proved me right. His performance suggests a complexity and presence which reflects aspects of Saddam's character and which is incredibly compelling to watch."
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The film was shot entirely on location in Tunisia, which offered a wealth of locations – from the expansive desert to the 1980s hotels which doubled as Saddam's opulent palaces.
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The main challenge of a 12-week shoot in Tunisia was the heat – during the recce on the northern edge of the Sahara the temperature reached 53 degrees centigrade!
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So what does Alex want audiences to take away from House Of Saddam? He says: "Above all I would like audiences to engage with the characters, and to understand our story and the tragedy of Iraq as being brought about by the unique combination of these characters, and their particular flaws within the broader forces of history.
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"Many films will be made about Iraq, and in particular in time many Iraqi filmmakers will tell the story of their country's suffering at the hands of Saddam's regime. Our intention with House of Saddam is different. We felt that we could explain to our audience something about what made Saddam tick, and what it was like to exist – and survive – within his innermost circle."
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