Customer Reviews

Darwin's Nightmare

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

DARWIN'S NIGHTMARE is truly that: a nightmare. Filmed on-location in Tanzania along the banks of the massive Lake Victoria, director Hubert Sauper puts the lens of his camera in the face of everyone involved in this human atrocity ...from those who aid it, to those at the bottom of its global circumstances.

The focus is on the gigantic Nile Perch, a freshwater fish of unbelievable size, who was unfortunately introduced to Lake Victoria and has decimated the native fish population. On the upside, however, is the new economy brought by the Nile Perch. Million dollar fish packing operations abound and jobs are available ...but only to a few hundred natives. The remainder live in squalor and on starvation's doorstep. All of the fish, without exception, is flown out of Africa to richer, more affluent, neighboring continents (mostly Europe). The money being made by the IMF and a few select companies is impressive, but can it last?

Mr. Sauper has done something extraordinary. Without putting in any bias, he has allowed this story to unfold on its own. I've never, EVER, seen a documentary like this. I was appalled by the educational system in Tanzania (basically nonexistent) and yet startled by the realization that none of the Tanzanians know or care about the globalization that is causing much of their problems (again, an educational issue). One of the natives that Mr. Sauper interviewed even wished that war would spill over from Angola and into Tanzania so that he could have "better work". Incredible!

AIDS, of course, is an ever present item in Africa, and Tanzania is no exception. But the additional problem here is that there are few facilities to care for the infected. On many of the large islands on Lake Victoria, there are no doctors, hospitals, or dispensaries. Prostitution is widespread as women become widowed and have no source of income. Children are on the street, fighting for fists full of rice, early victims of AIDS after losing their parents. And what is the world doing about this ...?

The hidden side-story in the documentary is "what's on the planes when they land in Tanzania." High-level officials say, "Nothing." But truth be told (by one of the pilots interviewed) sometimes weapons are shipped in on the planes, destined for war-torn areas of Africa. No food. No humanitarian supplies. Nothing else makes it in to Tanzania. We (the world) take from Africa, and all we give it is more death and destruction. This isn't stated directly in the film, but is easily surmised through the interviews.

Finally, there's the airport. Almost as much a character in the film as anyone, this landing field (I hesitate to call it an airport) is a ramshackle building with flies, bees, and broken equipment, resulting in many airliner mishaps throughout the years. A testament to the unspoken fact that the world has no intentions of developing this area. We'll take until there's nothing left, then we'll leave Tanzania and her people to her final verdict. Death!

I agree with the main point Hubert Sauper is trying to make with this film: that globalization, the increasing interconnectedness linking people and places around the world, has led to a deeply unjust economic order, in which a lucky few reap most of the benefits while most everyone else sees their living standards going from bad to worse. This argument I accept wholeheartedly, but I was disappointed by the manner in which "Darwin's Nightmare" tries to convey it.

Sauper brings his camera to the shores of Lake Victoria and talks with a bunch of people: a night watchman, a fish processing plant owner, a journalist, some fishermen, some bar girls, some Ukrainian cargo plane crews, and some street children. (These are the ones we see, anyway.) The pilots and the plant owners are doing okay, but everyone else seems to be facing greater misery and insecurity. This commerce raises some profound ironies: for one, Tanzania is exporting thousands of tons of Nile Perch fillets to Europe while millions of its own citizens are facing famine because they are too poor to buy the food available in the markets; for another, the planes that come to bring Lake Victoria's fish to Europe arrive empty, or sometimes even bringing arms to fuel Africa's bloody conflicts. A meeting of wealthy exporters and trade officials takes place on a posh hotel veranda while crippled children fight over food on the dusty street below.

Sauper's methods pack an emotional punch, but also leave the film open to criticism. Why doesn't he speak to a broader sample of Tanzanians? Why does he allude to issues like the Nile Perch's environmental impact or the arms trade but fail to follow up on them? Most importantly, why does he rely solely on anecdotal evidence to get his message across? The "big picture" is hinted at and only fleetingly glimpsed.

I ordered this DVD to show to students in a course on globalization. Like me, they found it disturbing and evocative, but less compelling than others we'd watched on similar themes. (Stephanie Black's 2001 documentary "Life and Debt," about globalization's impact in Jamaica, was much more effective in this regard.) Those who are inclined to accept Sauper's thinking may come away wanting more, and those inclined to be skeptical will find his case easier to dismiss, which is a shame, because it deserves to be hammered home in the most powerful way possible.

This film is phenomenal. By using the allegory of the predator fish Sauper hits the nail on the head as to how the dynamics of "survival of the fittest" affect our lives. The quote from the Ukrainian pilot sums it up: "African kids get tanks and guns for Christmas, European kids get grapes".
By showing how the unfair balance of trade locks people into poverty we are able to revisit the colonial past of every place that European business has touched. This story could have been the Spanish conquest of South America, the Dutch invasion of the far east/Indonesia or the story of North America.
Saupers gentle hand, softly, gently drawing out the story from real lives, takes us on an unforgettable journey with no easy answers or exits. Every player in the system only sees their part and only when the viewer pulls together the whole process of destitution does the horror become evident. The horror is that every one of us in involved in the same ecosystem of destruction.

What this documentary achieves is to expose the reality that has driven recent cinema blockbusters such as "Lord of War" and "Syriana". The medieval conditions of rotting fish dumps, where people fight for scraps of fish bones and brains (with maggots still crawling on them) should strike horror into the heart of every thinking person. How can it be that in these times, where the freight plane pilot scans through digital pics of his personal diary of family and terror, such scenes of primitive destitution play just under the surface.

Striking, stunning and the true horror of brilliant documentary exposure.

This documentary provides a dramatic reality check against the relative comfort in which most of us live. Regardless of how you feel about world economics and globalization, one cannot help but be moved by the impact that turning Lake Victoria into a fish farm has had on the people of that country.
The filmmaker stubs his toe a bit in his effort to obtain an support for a local radical's assertion that the fish was being exchanged for weapons. When he finally obtains an acknowledgment of the weapons trade from a pilot, it was to Angola, not Tanzania. He would have done better to follow what happens to the money, especially after hearing the very leaders of the country ignore the evidence of environmental impact and assert that their only interest was in selling fish.
But his unsophisticated interpretation of the problem does not blunt the impact of the film. The real story is in the faces and words of the local people. One leaves a screening with a single question. What are we doing to this world?

An avalanche of information from websites, newspapers, magazines, and even television helps us to know the effects of globalization. But knowing that two million people in some far away region face starvation is not understanding even one who does. Documentary filmmaker Hubert Sauper brings understanding through Darwin's Nightmare.

He leads us through Mwanza, a Tanzanian city on the shores of Lake Victoria with an airport. Every day the largest cargo planes carry 500 tons of fish to Europe, an amount that could provide a half pound per day to the two million Tanzanians facing starvation at the time of filming.

Hubert takes us from knowing to understanding by interviewing a Russian pilot that wants all children of the world to be happy, but knows that he has taken African food to Europe and European weapons to Africa ("For Christmas Day, children in Europe got grapes and children in Africa got weapons."). Hubert interviews a nightwatchman, who got the $1/night job because his predecessor was killed by thieves, and who welcomes war because then everyone could get a better paying job in the army. He interviews the small children that live on the street with nothing but ragged shorts and t-shirts, and who melt the plastic from fish boxes for the mind-numbing fumes.

The camera is so close to the subjects and stays, peering across a nose at the lake beyond, that you feel as if you had all day to sit with these people and listen to their hopes and fears. Interviews with an artist, a journalist, and several prostitutes flesh out the tragic cycles of natural resources leaving the very place they're needed because of some global economic calculus in which each person plays a small, unwilling part.

This is not the "feel good" movie of the year. It is the "feel" movie of the year. Hubert gives us a feeling and understanding of people every bit as warm and clever and loving as those with whom we share our table and our neighborhoods. At a reception after the film showing, Hubert indicated that he hoped that "understanding" will push people to find out more and do more to address such injustices.

This review was based on a theater, not DVD, viewing.

Some people really don't understand this film. The REAL subject matter takes place right near the very end! I remember the night when I first saw this film. During the last few minutes, and as the credits began rolling, no one moved. The entire audience was stunned, unable to move or think. We were physically motionless, our minds frozen, dazed, the hairs on our heads stood on end. Not a word was spoken while we realized the profound implications of what we'd just seen. What we would take from it was not what we'd thought, not what had been billed, and yet we knew not a single one of us would ever be the same.

I was among those with the fortunate opportunity to meet the director, Hubert Sauper, in person, for a Q & A session regarding what he'd unmistakably and purely accidentally uncovered by the close of this film. In an astoundingly open and honest discussion he answered questions and talked of his experiences while making the film. He explained how he planned its beginning, then explained when and how he knew he'd have to end it and leave abruptly after innocently discovering what he'd never planned to know - and why he decided to include that revelation exactly as it played out. The minute I left the theatre I knew I'd have to own my own copy so I could watch it again. And, show others. And if I were able, I'd buy everyone a copy because I felt it was that important.

A simply ASTOUNDING film that everyone, particularly those in the USA, should see. It won awards the world over. One moment I thought I was watching a film about the fishing industry at Lake Victoria, Africa. Then prostitution, hunger, murder, and other atrocities were revealed. Just when it was about to be over, suddenly I realized the camera had picked up something else, something not meant to be known. It wasn't drugs, not murder, not suicide, not euthanasia, but something far worse, and I was speechless! I couldn't move, my brain was numb. I knew what I saw and what it meant! Mr. Sauper verified my thoughts. I left with a headache, bursting with anger, more questions, and pent up energy. This was real! I felt sick to my stomach. My husband and I crossed the parking lot silently, in deep thought, saying nothing because we were numb with the reality of what had been shown us. Instead we watched each step we took until we reached the car. It's been a few years now since that premier, but I still feel the same when I recall or re-watch this film. It's still real and still a nightmare!

Frankly, when I picked up this DVD, I didn't know what to expect. I found it devestating, and it should be required reading for anyone who writes fantasy novels like "It Takes a Village."

The film starts with a Russian transport plane flying into a Tanzania airport bordering on Lake Victoria, the largest tropical lake in the world. From there two parallel stories take place, I thought. Actually it's more like two and a half. Allow me to explain.

Lake Victoria used to have countless native species of fish. Apparently some time in the 1960s, someone put a bucket of Nile perch in the lake. They're predators so they not only wiped out everything else in the lake but they're also wiping themselves out, eventually to leave the lake essentially a desert. (Some of the people in the fish business indicated that they used to send out like 500 tons of fish a day. It's now down to more like 55 tons.) So that's story one of the "survival" cliche.

People the interviewer talks to include a singer/prostitute, "girl friend" of many a pilot, a pastor, a journalist, the nightwatchman at the Fisheries Institute (who makes, incidentally $1 a day!) and others.

One finds that the fish that are caught, fileted and sent to Europe and Japan. The fish waste is collected by the many poor in the area who're forced to eat what remains. (You have to see where those remains are "processed" to believe it!) Children fight over what they can get together, thereby losing half the rice and what remains of the fish. Adults are largely HIV positive so they're death rate is overwhelming. That's story number 2 of survival:

Both the lake (fish) and the Africans who labor along the lake (people) are facing virtual extinction.

In the meantime, some UN officials are congratulating themselves as to the value of the fish on the economy--as if they're incapable of even witnessing what's really going on.

What's the "half" of the story? Well, when one asks the pilots what they bring into Tanzania on their planes, they assert that the planes are empty. But the journalist asserts that they're loaded with weapons for the various military activites taking place in Africa (Congo, etc.) One of the pilots even admits that towards the end of the film. But he says, in effect, "that's business."

Oh, and Eliza, the singer/prostitute is killed in the process of the film's production by one of her Australian "clients." And kids stoop to sniffing plastic from the fish packaging. (It wasn't clear to me why they did that. However, years ago I experienced the poor in Guatemala sniffing glue to help curb their hunger. I presume the sniffing served the same purpose for Tanzanian kids.) And the nightwatchman, who used a bow with poison-tipped arrows for anyone breaking into the institution he protects, actually looks forward to a war as it will lead to a better income.

In short, the story summarizes what you might call the darker side of globalization. Those of us in the "developed world," in the film's context, those of us who import the fish, have a fantasy of what it takes to get the fish to us. So we romanticize the concepts of globalization, applauding ourselves for giving jobs to the poor. There IS a darker side of that story, and this film, while painful, does a commendable job of exposing that side.

DARWIN'S NIGHTMARE is truly that: a nightmare. Filmed on-location in Tanzania along the banks of the massive Lake Victoria, director Hubert Sauper puts the lens of his camera in the face of everyone involved in this human atrocity ...from those who aid it, to those at the bottom of its global circumstances.

The focus is on the gigantic Nile Perch, a freshwater fish of unbelievable size, who was unfortunately introduced to Lake Victoria and has decimated the native fish population. On the upside, however, is the new economy brought by the Nile Perch. Million dollar fish packing operations abound and jobs are available ...but only to a few hundred natives. The remainder live in squalor and on starvation's doorstep. All of the fish, without exception, is flown out of Africa to richer, more affluent, neighboring continents (mostly Europe). The money being made by the IMF and a few select companies is impressive, but can it last?

Mr. Sauper has done something extraordinary. Without putting in any bias, he has allowed this story to unfold on its own. I've never, EVER, seen a documentary like this. I was appalled by the educational system in Tanzania (basically nonexistent) and yet startled by the realization that none of the Tanzanians know or care about the globalization that is causing much of their problems (again, an educational issue). One of the natives that Mr. Sauper interviewed even wished that war would spill over from Angola and into Tanzania so that he could have "better work". Incredible!

AIDS, of course, is an ever present item in Africa, and Tanzania is no exception. But the additional problem here is that there are few facilities to care for the infected. On many of the large islands on Lake Victoria, there are no doctors, hospitals, or dispensaries. Prostitution is widespread as women become widowed and have no source of income. Children are on the street, fighting for fists full of rice, early victims of AIDS after losing their parents. And what is the world doing about this ...?

The hidden side-story in the documentary is "what's on the planes when they land in Tanzania." High-level officials say, "Nothing." But truth be told (by one of the pilots interviewed) sometimes weapons are shipped in on the planes, destined for war-torn areas of Africa. No food. No humanitarian supplies. Nothing else makes it in to Tanzania. We (the world) take from Africa, and all we give it is more death and destruction. This isn't stated directly in the film, but is easily surmised through the interviews.

Finally, there's the airport. Almost as much a character in the film as anyone, this landing field (I hesitate to call it an airport) is a ramshackle building with flies, bees, and broken equipment, resulting in many airliner mishaps throughout the years. A testament to the unspoken fact that the world has no intentions of developing this area. We'll take until there's nothing left, then we'll leave Tanzania and her people to her final verdict. Death!

The title 'Darwin's Nightmare' may refer to the infestation of Giant Nile Perch destroying the ecosystem of Lake Victoria, but I suspect it has more to do with how the concept of 'survival of the fittest' is applied to human beings in one of the most awful places on Earth. Children fight over grimy handfuls of rice, with the strongest getting the most, and the gentler weeping over what they have lost (and then starving). These orphans of HIV and other diseases struggle alongside the heavily scarred adults who have somehow survived, prostitution for the women, dangerous, desperate work for the men, and all of them living off the rotting corpses of fish left after the juicy filets have been air transported to European tables (this is a truly horrendous thing, people stacking and handling worm infested fish frames).Tanzania's problems did not begin with this trade of fish that transformed a fishing/agrarian lifestyle into a feeder industry for fish factories, but the film certainly implies that it did make them worse. Director Sauper has captured the despair of the Tanzanian people, the viciousness of those among them who feed off their pain, and the callousness (or sheer ignorance) of those who profit from it. Yet he also finds grace: A Russian pilot wishing forlornly that he could help all children, and not knowing how, a Tanzanian fishing village leader wearily describing the obvious causes of his people's plight, children rendering down packaging plastic to sniff so they can escape their pathetic lives for a little while.

This sounds like something no one would want to watch, and it certainly would make your average complacent westerner squirm with every remembered whine about the difficulties of their own pampered lives. But Sauper has this STYLE, poetic in presentation, his narrative looping back onto itself to repeat themes again. There are no blunt hammers over the head here. He shows the people and who they are. I suspect Sauper is very brave. He gets into situations that are dicey getting his interviews. And his rapport with people is nuanced, pulling real and thoughtful comments from many of them, even the ones not so nice. Thankfully, he lets us decide who those are. There is little preaching here.

Highly recommended for any teacher trying to show their students a little of what life is like in other parts of the world, and for any one with a heart and a mind.

I would just like to present my problem with the long-awaited Region 1 release of Darwin's Nightmare, one of my top films of 2005 (along with 75 top 10 lists, as the cover of the DVD champions) - for details on the film's content, feel free to read other reviewer's reactions; I will only be addressing Image/HVE's release.

The film itself transfers well enough from big screen to small without much negative effect. The principle complaint here is the simply awful job on the subtitles. Darwin's Nightmare is mostly in english, though most of the interviewed subjects speak a much-broken variety of the language (a great, perhaps unintended charm of the film). This has given the production reason to feature subtitles, as some of the dialogue is rather hard to comprehend at times.

However, the subtitles on this disc are sloppy and inconsistent. Subtitles actually flicker at some points while on screen - the very first subtitles that appear (singing the words "Tanzania, Tanzania") flashed on and off the screen so quickly that I wasn't even sure I saw them. Several moments of film feature dialogue that is close to indecipherable even when listening closely, yet these moments are not subtitled. The next scene might feature more clearly spoken words and feature subtitles. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to what subtitles made the DVD (except, of course, when there was a foreign language - and even then, the translation was sparse and there was much dialogue left unsubbed). This makes it a particularly difficult watch for anyone who might be even slightly hearing impaired.

The DVD features no option for additional subtitles. I find this all most perplexing because I seem to recall subtitles appearing throughout the film when I saw it theatrically (multiple times).

The bonus features on the disc include another Sauper documentary called Kisangani Diary, an interview with Sauper and the theatrical trailer for Darwin's Nightmare. While I would have hoped to see some cut footage, I am not as disappointed with the special features as I am with the very lackluster presentation of the film itself.