Timely 'Trials of Henry Kissinger' is compelling

Sometimes, it's all in the timing. Look how prescient the documentary "The Trials of Henry Kissinger" turned out to be: Mere days before the film's arrival in theaters, the former secretary of state returned to newspaper headlines, appointed by President Bush as the chair of an independent panel charged with investigating U.S. intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

While Eugene Jarecki's film doesn't break any new ground in documentary as an art form — it's mostly talking heads — it's an informative and intriguing look at an increasingly shadowy figure. Is statesman Kissinger a peacemaker, or a not-yet-convicted war criminal?

Writer Christopher Hitchens — shown at his typewriter, cigarette dangling from his lips — has long waged a campaign against Kissinger, pointing to a number of international incidents including the bombings of Cambodia (1969) and Hanoi (1972), the assassination of a Chilean general (1970), and the sale of U.S. weapons to Indonesia for use in the East Timor massacre (1975).

These and other events seemed to bear Kissinger's fingerprints, but he has declined to respond to charges, even to the point of ignoring summons for questioning in five countries.

Hitchens, a firebrand perhaps most famous for his print attacks on Mother Teresa in the '90s, is clearly anxious to confront Kissinger — we see him lying in wait at a Kissinger public appearance. But the statesman remains an elusive target, and in this film we see him only in news clips. His defenders huff and puff (Hitchens, says Alexander Haig to Jarecki, is "sucking a sewer pipe"), but the evidence presented here against the man is compelling.

"Sometimes," says Kissinger enigmatically in an interview clip, "statesmen have to choose among evils." Indeed. "The Trials of Henry Kissinger" is a fine history lesson — and a frightening one.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com.