Caring about Africa
I'm back after a conspicuously long absence. There truly are no excuses for my behaviour. Forgive me, throngs of addicted readers. I hope the abstinence wasn't too hard to bear.
I watched The Constant Gardener last week. It was quite good. The story was engaging, the drama was well-orchestrated, Ralph Fiennes was hot and there were some truly exceptional supporting character performances, including but not limited to Rachel Weisz, who absolutely rocks, by the way.
But there's a but.
It was a good movie, but it wasn't a great movie, and I can't for the life of me figure out why. OK, well, I think I have figured it out now, but at the time, I was a little bewildered, as I could see no obvious flaws in the film's structure, cinematography, acting, storyline et cetera. Yet, the movie ended with me feeling like I'd spend a decent 2 hours watching a decent movie. And nothing more.
I think I finally figured out what went wrong; I did.
A short, quasi spoiler-free, aside: the movie is about evil pharmaceutical companies testing evil drugs with terrible side-effects on the unwitting population of Kenya. Ralph Fiennes plays a British diplomat who is determined to get to the bottom of this all because, um, something bad happens. I won't tell you what out of the goodness of my heart (but you'll find out ten minutes into the movie anyway).
Being a movie about drugs in Africa, there is ample opportunity for the audience (in this case, me) to be presented with a sliver of the continent. Kenya is the focus of the action. I saw mothers with AIDS, babies with AIDS, pretty much everyone with AIDS. I saw starving infants. I saw evil corporations distributing medicine that does more harm than it does good. I saw Rachel Weisz and various other brave knights (in the contemporary sense, of course) toiling and investigating and getting to the bottom of things. And I saw people who are exactly like me dying and suffering and generally having a terrible time just because they happen to be African.
This should have made for a great movie. The love story superimposed on this background should have pulled at my heartstrings, should have made me cry, should have made me care. But guess what? None of that happened. The movie ended and all I felt was a slight discomfort, a slight sense of unease. I didn't cry. In fact, my mood was exactly the same as it had been before the film.
Now I know myself pretty well, and I know that I'm not one of those ditzy idiots who care little about anything but nail polish. I watch the news, I read newspapers, I have strong political views, I get mad and passionate about things, I am not so entirely self-absorbed that I live in my own little world where everything is beautiful and everyone is happy. In short, I am aware, and I care (the rhyming is unintentional).
So when The Constant Gardener failed to make me respond to what it was depicting, I initially thought there was something wrong with it. But then I realised that what was wrong was only to do with myself.
You see, at the root of my strange apathy (because that's the best word to describe it) is a sense of helplessness. For a long time, I watched the news and I thought 'The world sucks.' I looked on the internet and I thought 'The world sucks.' This went on for a while until one day, I watched The Constant Gardener and I thought 'The world sucks and there's nothing I can do about it.'
And that's where I stop caring. Because it's too much. How am I supposed to deal with famine and AIDS and civil war and religious persecution and corporate evil and boy soldiers addicted to heroine and gang-raped women and malaria and have I mentioned civil war?
It sounds selfish and cowardly, but I stopped caring because I felt insignificant. Not in a teen- angsty 'nobody cares' way, but in a 'people are dying all over the place and here I am, unable to do anything much but get worried and organize cake sales'.
So I watched The Constant Gardener and felt absolutely nothing at all except a nagging guilty feeling that I should have felt something.
The Constant Gardener is a good movie, but I doubt I'll remember it when I'm senile and arthritic. And that's completely my fault. It's a good thing that there's people who continue caring about the big problems, otherwise we wouldn't even know they existed (and I blame the ruling classes for that; they're not interested in any country unless it's got oil, and if they're not interested, the media's not interested).
Poor reader! You were expecting a proper review, weren't you? And instead you got a whole load of me. Oh well. This is my blog after all...
I watched The Constant Gardener last week. It was quite good. The story was engaging, the drama was well-orchestrated, Ralph Fiennes was hot and there were some truly exceptional supporting character performances, including but not limited to Rachel Weisz, who absolutely rocks, by the way.
But there's a but.
It was a good movie, but it wasn't a great movie, and I can't for the life of me figure out why. OK, well, I think I have figured it out now, but at the time, I was a little bewildered, as I could see no obvious flaws in the film's structure, cinematography, acting, storyline et cetera. Yet, the movie ended with me feeling like I'd spend a decent 2 hours watching a decent movie. And nothing more.
I think I finally figured out what went wrong; I did.
A short, quasi spoiler-free, aside: the movie is about evil pharmaceutical companies testing evil drugs with terrible side-effects on the unwitting population of Kenya. Ralph Fiennes plays a British diplomat who is determined to get to the bottom of this all because, um, something bad happens. I won't tell you what out of the goodness of my heart (but you'll find out ten minutes into the movie anyway).
Being a movie about drugs in Africa, there is ample opportunity for the audience (in this case, me) to be presented with a sliver of the continent. Kenya is the focus of the action. I saw mothers with AIDS, babies with AIDS, pretty much everyone with AIDS. I saw starving infants. I saw evil corporations distributing medicine that does more harm than it does good. I saw Rachel Weisz and various other brave knights (in the contemporary sense, of course) toiling and investigating and getting to the bottom of things. And I saw people who are exactly like me dying and suffering and generally having a terrible time just because they happen to be African.
This should have made for a great movie. The love story superimposed on this background should have pulled at my heartstrings, should have made me cry, should have made me care. But guess what? None of that happened. The movie ended and all I felt was a slight discomfort, a slight sense of unease. I didn't cry. In fact, my mood was exactly the same as it had been before the film.
Now I know myself pretty well, and I know that I'm not one of those ditzy idiots who care little about anything but nail polish. I watch the news, I read newspapers, I have strong political views, I get mad and passionate about things, I am not so entirely self-absorbed that I live in my own little world where everything is beautiful and everyone is happy. In short, I am aware, and I care (the rhyming is unintentional).
So when The Constant Gardener failed to make me respond to what it was depicting, I initially thought there was something wrong with it. But then I realised that what was wrong was only to do with myself.
You see, at the root of my strange apathy (because that's the best word to describe it) is a sense of helplessness. For a long time, I watched the news and I thought 'The world sucks.' I looked on the internet and I thought 'The world sucks.' This went on for a while until one day, I watched The Constant Gardener and I thought 'The world sucks and there's nothing I can do about it.'
And that's where I stop caring. Because it's too much. How am I supposed to deal with famine and AIDS and civil war and religious persecution and corporate evil and boy soldiers addicted to heroine and gang-raped women and malaria and have I mentioned civil war?
It sounds selfish and cowardly, but I stopped caring because I felt insignificant. Not in a teen- angsty 'nobody cares' way, but in a 'people are dying all over the place and here I am, unable to do anything much but get worried and organize cake sales'.
So I watched The Constant Gardener and felt absolutely nothing at all except a nagging guilty feeling that I should have felt something.
The Constant Gardener is a good movie, but I doubt I'll remember it when I'm senile and arthritic. And that's completely my fault. It's a good thing that there's people who continue caring about the big problems, otherwise we wouldn't even know they existed (and I blame the ruling classes for that; they're not interested in any country unless it's got oil, and if they're not interested, the media's not interested).
Poor reader! You were expecting a proper review, weren't you? And instead you got a whole load of me. Oh well. This is my blog after all...
Labels: Deep Thought, Reviews
posted by The Poodle's Friend at 8:23 PM
6 Comments:
I understand that feeling completely. A few years ago I was very interested in politics, international and domestic. I read a lot and I got angry a lot. But in the end I just became jaded at my inability to do anything - not just my inability but the inability of people in general. And funnily enough, a lot of my anger was directed at people who just don't care.
I still care, but the anger is all underneath the surface now and well shackled.
i know what you mean. i hate feeling like that. like everything is soooo horrible and you cant do anything about it and its only a matter of time before someone else is watching you on the news and thinking the same thing. everytime i feel like that, i go out and buy a new pratchett and the world makes sense again. i highly reccommend it. a good dose of terry pratchett is just what the world needs and no, i am not being paid to advertise.
" i'm aware and i care" lol. hilarious.
We should have soo seen The Constant Gardner before Pride and Prejudice and not the other way round.
What I personally think is that we all care and we're all aware but the problem is that we just don't want to chage our lives to make the difference and let others do it. There are a lot of people trying to make a difference. I know they don't attain a substantial progress in the entire country but whatever little they do, even if its just a person or a family it is they are helping...it makes a difference to the lives of the people they have changed. I really really respect people like those because I know for sure that I wouldn't ever be able to do something like that and its not because I don't care, its because I'm probably too selfish and that is what I really felt guilty about when I saw the movie.
PS: Your obsession with Rachel Weiz is quite creepy, albeit understandable.
PPS: Sorry, this is long!
This blog is so not like the one I stumbled into a few weeks ago. Mortals who've little will power abjectly submit to reading those reviews and then rebuke themselves for eternity, "why didn't I just close the browser, instead of reading the whole thing? Why didn't I drop dead instead traversing the whole well-written article?"
No this time I chained myself, and didn't read more than a paragraph.
And I must say this is hardly fair to your “throngs of addicted readers” who may not have watched the movies you did.
On another note, why is it that I always assume a matronly, motherly admonishing voice to answer your comments?
ash- it's good to know other people feel the same angsty way. As Michael Jackson once put it: 'You are not alone, I am here with you!' Or something like that.
eris- Pan has told me all about your Discworld obsession. What do you recommend starting with? Is there any particular order to read them in?
frankengirl- thanks for the lovely comment! I agree with your post scriptum; it definitely has done its job, however depressing it may be.
nitin- aw! Your motherly voice is funny. Actually, you'll find that this post has practically no spoilers. I know, it's amazing, isn't it?
Pan- you're a selfish byatch, and we all know that. YOU SUCK!
TPF - Your maturity amuses me.
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