Descent into dizzying illogic

It is a painful testimony to just how long the ongoing war in Iraq has been with us that filmmakers are now returning to the topic for sequels, sidebars and further inquiries. It was while shooting footage for “Gunner Palace” in 2003 that filmmaker Michael Tucker videotaped a raid on a Baghdad house suspected as part of a plot against British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Upon returning to Baghdad some months later, Tucker would follow up on the whereabouts of the men taken into custody that night, leading him down the unexpected rabbit hole of the story of Yunis Abbas, a freelance journalist held for eight months at Abu Ghraib even after it was determined he was of no intelligence value nor guilty of any crime.

As directed by Tucker and Petra Epperlein, “The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair” is a chillingly pitch-black comedy of errors, as unlikely as that may sound. Assembled from post-jail interviews with Abbas, as well as a former American soldier who oversaw his detainment, footage and photographs taken by Abbas himself, and Epperlein’s bold comic-strip drawings, the film becomes a dizzying descent into a world of contradictions, military illogic and ineffectual bureaucracy.

After extensive interrogations, when Abbas was finally told of his suspected participation in the plot to kill Blair, he recalls that he laughed out loud at the absurdity of the idea.

It is this response that forms the core of “The Prisoner,” a sense that the events being discussed have to be portrayed with a slight mischievous surreality because they are too preposterous to take with an entirely straight face.

If this were fiction, it would seem unbelievable, and yet here it is, an all-too-real tale of survival amid the soulless machinery of war and occupation.

In spots, most notably a sequence of Abbas’ photographs set to heavy-handed choral music, it seems as if Tucker and Epperlein don’t fully believe in the basic “truthiness,” to borrow the phrase, of what they have. They have a tendency to pile on -- like contributors to an online comments section trying to outdo one another -- overstating their take on things rather than letting events speak for themselves.

The disorienting strangeness of Abbas’ story is enough in and of itself, and the most deeply affecting moments in “The Prisoner” come from simply witnessing the way in which his ordeal has transformed him, permanently etching its pain onto his every glance and word.

*

“The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair.” MPAA rating: PG-13 for strong language and mature thematic elements. Running time: 1 hour, 14 minutes. Exclusively at Laemmle’s Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd., L.A. (323) 848-3500.