FILMS WORHT WATCHING by Robert Alstead

Connie Nielson as Anna in The Situation.

With The Situation, director Philip Haas has set his sights high. Billed as the first dramatic feature to come out of the US about the occupation of Iraq, it aims to offer a new perspective that goes beyond the media coverage and string of excellent documentaries, such as Iraq In Fragments and My Country, My Country (both Oscar-nominated), about the quagmire, or “situation,” as everyone refers to it, in Iraq.
The story loosely follows Anna (Connie Nielson), a female news-hound investigating a story about US soldiers who have thrown a couple of Iraqi teenagers off a bridge, resulting in the drowning death of one of them. Not only does Anna provide a troubled lens through which we view events, but she is plugged into the network of connections that links the various characters. Her interpreter, for instance, is the son of a diplomat who is trying to negotiate a cushy, diplomatic position in Australia from her CIA boyfriend (Damian Lewis) in exchange for information. The diplomat is also secretly helping a local power monger, called the Sheik, to undermine a local resistance leader.
In the absence of any civil order – the police force is populated by thugs – unlikely allegiances and risky deals abound. In fact, a central point at issue is the suggestion that the Americans have responded to the problems in Iraq too simplistically, as depicted by Dan’s struggle to persuade his co-workers to build bridges to moderate Iraqis, such as Rafeeq, a respected veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, instead of lumping them in with radical insurgents.
The Situation was shot in Morocco and with its sandy, parched landscape achieves a realistic look. It also makes good use of a mixed US and Arab cast and despite moments of stilted dialogue, captures the air of hopelessness and nervous exhaustion in Baghdad.
However, there is a weakness at its centre. There is a love triangle-thing going on between Anna, Dan and her sensitive Iraqi photographer (Mido Hamada in an overly-muted role), which is poorly drawn-out and adds little to the dramatic proceedings. Also, at the end of the film, I had the sense that events in Iraq are now more dangerous and more confusing than are portrayed here.
Perhaps it might have been better for Haas to have waited until the dust settled. If it ever does. (The Situation screens at the Vancouver International Film Centre, 1181 Seymour Street at Davie, until June 7.)
In spite of its title, God Grew Tired of Us is a story of hope. The Lost Boys of Sudan were young men who walked more than a thousand gruelling miles to escape government death squads in war-torn Sudan. In 2001, a decade after their flight, 3,800 of the 12,000 survivors who were living in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya were given the chance of a lifetime: a fresh start in the US.
Christopher Quinn’s documentary, winner of both the Audience Award and Grand Jury prize at Sundance last year, follows three young men as they leave their close-knit Christian community to embark on a new life where simple things that we take for granted – electricity, flushing water and Santa Claus – are alien. Initially, the film is part educational piece and part fish-out-of-water type comedy, with gentle jokes made at the boys’ expense as they enter a new world. In one scene, they are shown eating the butter and sugar from the in-flight meal, with one of the boys remarking that he doesn’t like airline food.
As we follow them over the course of almost four years, their initial exhilaration is tempered by a sense of deep-seated homesickness and unfavourable comparisons between their new, minimum-wage lifestyles in the US and their previous lives in Kakuma. People are less friendly, they say. Although at one point, police tell the boys not to walk in large groups because they are threatening the neighbours, the film largely avoids the thorny subject of racism. At a Lost Boys’ reunion, there’s also a hint that some of the boys are slipping off the straight and narrow. The film doesn’t gloss over these things, but for the sake of the story it doesn’t dwell on them either. Instead, it gives credit to the main characters whose positive attitude and perseverance enabled them to rebuild their lives and provide inspiration to others.
One other film to look out for this month is Jindabyne (due out June 15), a psychological drama by Ray Lawrence (Lantana) starring Laura Linney and Gabriel Byrne. When Stewart (Byrne) goes on a fishing trip with some of his Aussie mates, they discover a drowned aboriginal woman. Instead of reporting it, they choose to continue their weekend and inform authorities later, a decision that has regrettable consequences.

Robert Alstead recently completed the 80-minute documentary You Never Bike Alone, a documentary about Vancouver’s Critical Masses. For screening info and the DVD, visit www.youneverbikealone.com