Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Invisible Children (movie review)


Good hearted and strong willed Norte Americanos (gringos) take it into their heads to check out the worst of the worst, or so is Sudan's reputation to the south. Their claim is to have no special video making skills, however by the time this one gets produced, they're a veritable Werner Herzog collective, so I can't vouch for "low skills". They find a hot, boring place with nothing going on for the most part, then figure out a way to tell the story of Invisible Children. The scene is no longer Sudan, but northern Uganda, and the plot is of a possessed prophet lady and perhaps illegitimate heir, a jungle fighter who feeds off abducted children in a perpetual war against some distant government. The UN comes through and wrings its hands. The situation remains intolerably awful. The children, in interviews, mention looking forward to death as probably the best possible escape route. The camera skills include these amazing pans that you wouldn't get from simple hand-holding. I need to find their "making of". Movies like these suggest severe grade inflation is occuring, as no one should be bragging about being a "doctor" of anything with this kind of patient suffering. It's Quack Planet we're on here, why kid ourselves? Fun to dress up and play doctor though, I get it. We've all got a doctorate in Life on Hell Planet, eh? In response to this disturbing story, you get this spreading cult of Visible Children, first responders working to help the Invisible ones (a topic for some of the special features). If you want twisted worlds with bad guys and ways of making a positive difference, you're in luck. Noble warrior types will get meaningful work. These movie-makers were acting as civilians lets celebrate, meaning you have more branding options yet for this work that you do. At the very least, we should be developing persistent medical records for each and every human being, as "millions and billions" are small numbers in light of today's cloud-based human services. We could easily get Cassandra into this business no? Through some Red Cross front end perhaps? Or lets go straight to academic enrollment in work/study and up the credit value of life experience, give these kids a fast track within the Global U. Related reading: L. Lamor Williams, Never the same: Former child soldiers describe the horrors of war as activists urge the UN to adopt sanctions against relentless violators, World Ark (Holiday 2009, pp. 23-26), www.heifer.org
Lindsey @ Muddy's