Shadow of The Holy Book

There are some crazy things in government, but I don't know that I'd heard of anything as crazy as the subject of this documentary. The Turkmen dictator wrote a rambling book called The Ruhmana, full of bad poetry, inaccurate history, and philosophical musings, and then made it required reading in all grades of school, a requirement for public office, and part of the drivers license exam. He erected statues of the book, ran television programs featuring readings, and outlawed criticisms of the work.

The documentary follows the two film-makers as they investigate the effects of The Ruhmana, and as they try to get corporations to comment on the habit of sponsoring translations into their native languages in exchange for business favors in Turkmenistan.

Not surprisingly the companies give them the runaround, and the Turkmen citizenry come off as ignorant and misled. And while their point is a good one (that corporations will happily lend support to fascist dictators in exchange for profit), it's a point that doesn't necessarily need to be made again. The sheer number of companies who have paid lip service to the dictator is certainly disturbing, but their failed attempts to confront CEOs and marketing departments come off as a low rent attempt at the Michael Moore school of documentary. It's entertaining, and there's plenty of stuff worth seeing, but I found myself wishing they'd replaced the dozens of clips of them failing to get comments with something a bit more forceful.