23/05/2009

The Silent Army, produced by Holland’s The Entertainment Group and sponsored by UNESCO, differs from French director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s film about child soldiers, Johnny Mad Dog, which screened in the same section at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, in that it is based on the personal experience of Dutch director Jean van de Velde, introduced to the Un Certain Regard audience as a "white negro" (since he grew up between the former Belgian Congo and Burundi).

This white element is the driving force of the film, which centres on the friendship between a little Dutch boy, Thomas, brought up alone since the death of his mother by his father Eduard (played by singer Marco Borsato), a restaurant owner in Uganda, and sweet Abu (who only needs to be given a football shirt for him to recreate an entire match for his loving parents). After the attack on his village and the most horrible of initiatory acts (killing his own father), the latter finds himself enlisted in the rebel army led by the odious Obeke (impressively performed by Abby Mukiibi Nkaaga).

Obeke renames all his young recruits, forces them to call him "daddy" and, while displaying a broad, hideous smile – which contrasts with the generous smile on Abu’s father’s face, as he encourages his son to strike the sabre down on him to save his own skin – orders them to do unimaginable things, without batting an eyelid, with an unbelievable sense of his own legitimacy (for, he says, in a country where people die at 45, these children are young adults...). While Thomas and his father go in search of Abu, we witness the terrifying destruction of the child soldiers’ innocence.

Indeed, unlike the film presented by Luigi Falorni at the 2008 Berlin Film Festival, Heart of Fire [+see also:
film review
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film profile] (whose little Eritrean protagonist manages to grow up and develop her own moral sense), in The Silent Army, the recruits’ young personalities and candour are entirely eclipsed, their resistance completely eroded (an enforced desensitisation that Van de Velde renders palpable for viewers by ensuring that, as the film unfolds, they too are less and less startled and get used to the sound of machine guns), to the point where Abu refuses to acknowledge the person who comes to save him, up to the final, apocalyptic scene of the sublime sacrifice of young Ama.

Beyond its important message and harsh images, one of the great strengths of the film lies in the way the director, who really knows his subject, depicts without over-simplification the variety of attitudes among the region’s white people, ranging from the vultures, the colonial settlers who live parallel lives whilst avoiding getting involved in local matters and those who want to help. Indeed, none of them are either completely black or white.

But the most deeply touching aspect of this film (before the prevailing violence takes over and puts the audience in a state of shock), which we never want to see end, is the beautiful description of the friendship between the two little boys. It is like a bridge between two radically different cultures, where family love is just as tender, a bridge built on the children’s mutual tolerance, with one unjealously accepting his friend’s easier life, the other willing to share with his playmate, whilst never patronising him.

As viewers, we’d like Van de Velde to one day treat us to other scenes like the one where Thomas and Abu play video games together, swapping at regular intervals the real joystick and the other, imitation one (but just as effective due to the force of their naive imaginations) that Abu’s father has sculpted in mahogany for his son.

(Translated from French)