Kopple’s ‘Desert One’: history and memorial in one

Above: A scene from the documentary "Desert One." (Photo: New York Times)

Movie review: "Desert One," directed by Barbara Kopple, featuring Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Kevin Hermening, Barbara Timm. Streaming through Seattle International Film Festival Virtual Cinema.

The passage of history is a slow, sometimes maddeningly gradual process, the larger effects of which often become comprehensible only years afterward, when scholars attempt to put them in some sort of perspective.

And as America’s current political and social polarization shows, any sort of common perspective is becoming appreciably more difficult to achieve. 

Which is why we need more filmmakers such as Barbara Kopple. The winner of two Oscars for Best Documentary Feature – the first for 1976’s “Harlan County U.S.A” and the second for 1990’s “American Dream “ – Kopple is an old-school type of documentarian who strives to present stories that stick to the facts, and then let said facts speak for themselves.

That’s not to say that she doesn’t present a point of view. Her sympathies in “Harlan County U.S.A.” are firmly on the side of the miners who were striking for better working conditions and pay. In “American Dream,” though, she shows what can happen when labor – in this case the union representing workers at a Minnesota packing plant – overestimates its power.

Kopple’s adherence to traditional documentary style, blended with a bit of contemporary stylisms, are on full display in her latest feature, titled “Desert One,” which was produced originally for the History Channel and which I streamed at home through the Seattle International Film Festival’s virtual cinema.

“Desert One” takes its name from a failed attempt by a joint U.S. military force to rescue the 52 Americans who had been taken hostage five months earlier, on Nov. 4th, 1979, in the first wave of the Iranian Revolution. That name was what mission control called the landing spot in a remote part of Iran used by Air Force cargo planes and Navy helicopters – taking off, respectively, from the nation of Oman and the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz – as the staging spot for the final push into the Tehran embassy where the hostages were being housed.

The detailed plan, which one of the movie’s commentators describes charitably as having “too many working parts,” almost immediately began to break down. Some of the helicopters developed problems and had to turn back. Afterward, a bus full of Iranian civilians happened upon the supposedly deserted road next to where the Americans had landed. Then – after the mission had already been scrubbed – a dust storm caused by helicopter rotors blinded a pilot who then crashed his helicopter into one of the cargo planes, causing a huge fire and the deaths of eight crewmen.

The details of the crash itself comprise one of Kopple’s concessions to contemporary documentary filmmaking as she uses animated sequences to recreate what happened.

Kopple’s overall film, though, is much more than a mere look at that single mission, which was officially dubbed as Operation Eagle Claw. While interviewing a whole range of officials these four decades after the fact, from then-President Jimmy Carter on down to such captives as Marine guard Kevin J. Hermening along with several mission operatives and intelligence consultants, Kopple outlines why and how the Iranian Revolution occurred in the first place. As is now clear, the roots extended back to the 1953 U.S.-backed coup that ousted Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosadegh and replaced him with the Western-friendly Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

The simmering resentment against the Shah’s harsh governing style built over the decades until, supported by the cleric Ayatollah Khomeini, citizens revolted, stormed the U.S. embassy and imprisoned the workers. Meanwhile, the Shah fled, traveling from country to country before dying in Egypt on July 27, 1980.

Kopple also documents how the whole hostage situation affected the U.S., from Carter’s insistence on trying to solve the problem through diplomacy to the protests by Iranian supporters against the Shah. Criticism was thrown at Carter in particular from civilians such as Marine Hermening’s mother, Barbara Timm, whose visit to her captive son aroused much controversy. And, notably, presidential candidate Ronald Reagan would ride his own censure of Carter to victory the following November.

Finally, though, Kopple’s movie acts as a memorial to the members of the mission itself, especially to those eight men who died doing what they saw as their duty. History may not look back kindly at some of Carter’s decisions, especially to trust the military to pull off such an overly complicated plan. But the courage shown by the men who volunteered to implement that plan, however futile their sacrifice proved to be, deserves to be remembered. And to be honored.

Regardless of our personal politics, that’s a duty of history we should all find easy to embrace.