Having experienced the death of her child -- beaten to death as it clung to her back -- Darfur Sudanese rebel Hajewa Adam has the right to be as cynical and angry as anyone on Earth.
But in more than one scene in the documentary Darfur Now, we see her sitting under a tree, gun at her side, optimistically assuring others that "the white people will come" and straighten out the nightmare of state-sponsored rape and murder that has taken over the Western section of her country and scarred her for life.
And what are "the white people" doing?
One young activist L.A. waiter takes a "divestment" petition all the way to Sacramento, where California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announces to the government of Sudan via the news cameras, "Your genocide will not occur on our watch, and it will not occur on our dime!"
Meanwhile, George Clooney and Don Cheadle (not a white person, but one of the producers of this movie) travel to China -- Sudan's biggest trading partner -- to urge them to "divest" as well, the human-rights card playing about as well in China as it always does. They then are off to Egypt (Sudan's biggest trading partner in Africa) and pose for a lot of pictures, with about the same results.
Elsewhere, a prosecutor for the International Criminal Court succeeds in getting indictments against two Sudanese government officials who have clearly ordered and taken part in atrocities.
In response, the Sudan names one of the accused Minister Of Humanitarianism.
If it were fiction, Darfur Now would be the kind of curdled satire Kurt Vonnegut would write.
Instead, it is a movie that seems very pleased with itself and the sea of good intentions in which it bobs.
But there is something inherently wrong with a movie about Darfur that focuses on the lives of six people, and only two of them are Darfur Sudanese.
(The sixth is the cheerful Ecuadorean leader of a fleet of UN relief trucks who considers it a good day when none of his people get shot).
And as laudable as it is that the likes of Clooney and Cheadle are using their celebrity to draw the world's attention to ostensibly the first-ever genocide to be declared as it happens, their presence tends to lessen the gravitas of the effort.
Darfur Now is all over the place, a confusing presentation of an admittedly confusing situation -- Arab vs. black, Muslim vs. Muslim, driven by drought that has fueled famine and helped destroy the agriculture of the Darfur tribes, and featuring "third party," Arab thugs called Janjaweed whose reign of terror is clearly sanctioned by the government of Sudan.
Between scenes on the ground (the other Darfur subject, reluctant refugee-leader "Sheik" Ahmed Mohammed Abakar is a study in dignity and frustration), Darfur Now presents a lot of talk, empty seats in legislative assemblies and people feeling good about themselves.
But it is those underutilized scenes from Darfur that are the movie's "gold" -- particularly the ones that take place in rebel camps, locations that surely put the crew in danger themselves.
In the end, Darfur Now is a movie whose hopeful message is undermined by its seemingly hopeless reality.
(This film is rated PG)
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