三楼
In the case of writer-director Jean van de Velde’s The Silent Army, another unusually tough-minded film about the casualties of war, itwas chosen by the Netherlands as its official entry to the Oscars, only to then be ruled out on an absurd technicality: The version of the film screened in Cannes and submitted to the academy differed substantially from the one commercially released in Dutch cinemas, where van de Velde’s film was called White Light and ran some 30 minutes longer. Per the academy’s arcane rules, only White Light would have been eligible for the Oscar, no matter that van de Velde himself supervised the re-editing, making The Silent Army, in effect, his director’s cut. Never mind: See it anyway. I myself approached the movie with a certain degree of skepticism, believing it in its early passages to be yet another entry in one of my least favorite genres: the pious white man’s Africa guilt-trip movie (see: Cry Freedom, Hotel Rwanda, The Last King of Scotland). Then, around the time that one of van de Velde’s characters asks, “Why is Africa always the playground of white people showing off their moral superiority?,” I began to perk up.
The man on the receiving end of those words, Eduard Zuiderwijk (singerMarco Borsato), is an African-born Dutchman running in an unnamed East African country a restaurant whose clientele runs the gamut from foreign aid workers to black market arms dealers. The country itself is subject to the familiar strife between an ineffectual postcolonial government and an insurgent guerrilla warlord, General Obeke, backed by an army of teen and preteen foot soldiers. When the best friend of Eduard’s son becomes one of Obeke’s unwitting conscripts, the politically disengaged restaurateur sets out to find him — and if the plotting of The Silent Army strains credibility at times, van de Velde’s sure-footed direction and savvy about the complexities of African society more than make up for it. A child of Africa himself, raised in Congo andBurundi, van de Velde has an innate feel for the region’s social and moral injustices, which goes far beyond Hollywood platitudinizing. He also has an ace up his sleeve in the form of actor Abby Mukiibi Nkaaga, whose Obeke is the sort of grandiloquent sociopath Charles Laughton orOrson Welles might have played. An evildoer? Perhaps. But like everyone in The Silent Army, he has his reasons.
The Silent Army screens at Grauman’s Chinese on Sat., Oct. 31 at 4 p.m.The City of Life and Death screens at the Mann Chinese 6 on Sun., Nov. 1 at 1 p.m.
In the case of writer-director Jean van de Velde’s The Silent Army, another unusually tough-minded film about the casualties of war, itwas chosen by the Netherlands as its official entry to the Oscars, only to then be ruled out on an absurd technicality: The version of the film screened in Cannes and submitted to the academy differed substantially from the one commercially released in Dutch cinemas, where van de Velde’s film was called White Light and ran some 30 minutes longer. Per the academy’s arcane rules, only White Light would have been eligible for the Oscar, no matter that van de Velde himself supervised the re-editing, making The Silent Army, in effect, his director’s cut. Never mind: See it anyway. I myself approached the movie with a certain degree of skepticism, believing it in its early passages to be yet another entry in one of my least favorite genres: the pious white man’s Africa guilt-trip movie (see: Cry Freedom, Hotel Rwanda, The Last King of Scotland). Then, around the time that one of van de Velde’s characters asks, “Why is Africa always the playground of white people showing off their moral superiority?,” I began to perk up.
The man on the receiving end of those words, Eduard Zuiderwijk (singerMarco Borsato), is an African-born Dutchman running in an unnamed East African country a restaurant whose clientele runs the gamut from foreign aid workers to black market arms dealers. The country itself is subject to the familiar strife between an ineffectual postcolonial government and an insurgent guerrilla warlord, General Obeke, backed by an army of teen and preteen foot soldiers. When the best friend of Eduard’s son becomes one of Obeke’s unwitting conscripts, the politically disengaged restaurateur sets out to find him — and if the plotting of The Silent Army strains credibility at times, van de Velde’s sure-footed direction and savvy about the complexities of African society more than make up for it. A child of Africa himself, raised in Congo andBurundi, van de Velde has an innate feel for the region’s social and moral injustices, which goes far beyond Hollywood platitudinizing. He also has an ace up his sleeve in the form of actor Abby Mukiibi Nkaaga, whose Obeke is the sort of grandiloquent sociopath Charles Laughton orOrson Welles might have played. An evildoer? Perhaps. But like everyone in The Silent Army, he has his reasons.
The Silent Army screens at Grauman’s Chinese on Sat., Oct. 31 at 4 p.m.The City of Life and Death screens at the Mann Chinese 6 on Sun., Nov. 1 at 1 p.m.
