Screen Scene: “Darfur Now”
By Guido Pellegrini
Nov. 1, 2007 9:00 p.m.
Ted Braun’s documentary, “Darfur Now,” presents a festering critique of Sudan’s Arab-dominated military regime, which has funded and plotted the murder of thousands of non-Arabic Africans. But the film has grander ambitions. It portends to portray the global ramifications of the Genocide in Darfur. However, these aspirations are never completely fulfilled, and the work as a whole suffers because of it.
“Darfur Now” follows the exploits of six men and women, as they each become involved with the crisis in their own particular ways. The individual subjects are wide ranging. Among them are UCLA student Adam Sterling, actor Don Cheadle, African rebel-fighter Hejewa Adam and Luis Moreno-Ocampo, prosecutor of the International Criminal Court of The Hague.
This internationalist approach allows the film to explore a multitude of disparate perspectives. The panoramic view of the genocide in “Darfur Now” allows us to see all the little pieces as they move independently around the world chessboard.
Ironically, it is this same broad viewpoint that ends up being the film’s most potent shortcoming. The film is simply too short to encompass its magnificent scope. It touches on many points of views, but does justice to none of them.
Only a few of the interviewees are portrayed as interesting and complex human beings. And even then, the overall feeling one gets is that more time should have been spent on each person, fleshing out the particulars.
Most critically, the plight of the African farmers is not communicated as forcefully as it could have been. To be sure, there are some heart-rending testimonials, as some of the best moments in the film occur when innocent witnesses recount the atrocities committed by the Janjaweed, Arab militias paid by the government to terrorize the African populace.
But it’s too little. A film that seeks to expose the suffering of a people needs to linger on that suffering. But “Darfur Now” doesn’t linger. It returns, time and again, to the comforts of California and New York City, to follow its global cast of characters. We don’t get a feel for the claustrophobic fear inside of which the persecuted Africans live, because the film does not evoke a sense of claustrophobic dread.
“Darfur Now” is still a documentary that should be seen, if only for the importance of its content. But it remains a flawed and incomplete glance at a very complicated issue.
““ Guido Pellegrini
Email Pellegrini at [email protected]
