Liberia: An Uncivil War (2004)
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another typical argusfest screening - me and 4 other people. 2 journalists were in liberia during charles taylor’s final days - one in monrovia, interviewing taylor and others around the city, the other with the lurd who were approaching the city with the intent of tossing taylor out. it’s an incredible document of what they see.
they do a good job of only touching on the more sensational aspects of the war without dwelling on them, and keeping their focus on liberia as a whole. for example, one of the first scenes with the lurd they show a group of boys excited to eat a victim’s heart, then they show him hold up the heart, but that’s the last we hear of such things. we see them dancing during gun battle, but nothing is said. juju is important, but it’s just one more aspect in the whole confusing mess. the ethnic, religious (really bizarre scene with lurd troop getting ready to go to battle, praising allah, then they pause a second and decide to do the lord’s prayer too,) and neighboring countries/ecowas aspects are similarly touched on, but not examined much.
i think maybe the movie was good for me since i’ve been reading so much about it, and this kind of contextualized it all - to see the importance all the components had for people there at the time. there are so many moments that just kind of hint at the enormity - the guy in monrovia describing the u.s. as a big brother, then saying ‘maybe it’s one sided’; the taylor apologist says taylor wasn’t responsible for the civil war, liberia was ‘a ripe fruit’; someone saying religion and ethnicity only mattered during the war. each aspect so less important than the upcoming showdown and the reality of clumsy mortar operators. the film is weaker when it tries to actually explain the background of liberia in their own narration, obviously glossing over huge important items, but pretty incredible with its on-the-scene documenting and interviews.
it also hammered home what a bizarre figure taylor is, and introduced one i didn’t know before: dr. ka paul. he seemed like a clown, and when he told the refugees that when you fast god is smiling (or opening the gates of heaven? can’t remember) he really seemed like one. but apparently he’s persuasive.
the bodies carried to the u.s. embassy and the burial at the end were pretty difficult to watch.
a lot of the focus of the movie was the possibility of u.s. intervention, which only happened after taylor left of course. i think this might be the overall impact of the film for most people, and it’s a bit weaker for that. it gives people something to latch onto, but kind of diminishes the enormity of problems facing liberia to just say ‘that damn bush, why didn’t he blah blah blah.’ last year at argus i saw final solution - a bewildering 220 minutes on the hindu/muslim conflict in india in 2002. i knew very little going in, and the film didn’t give me a single thing to really hang onto, and i think it’s overall effect was more powerful for that.
after the screening someone asked where taylor is now and i got to jump in with the little i know (nigeria finally handed him over in march for the war crimes trial in sierra leone.) it’s always exciting when i actually know something.
is argusfest the same series we went to last year? the discussion was a little more rewarding this time? It has got to be super hard to make a film on a place like Liberia, so much iteresting stuff hapenning but just all over the place.
Left by nate on May 22nd, 2006