The Most Dangerous Place on Earth : ‘Ghosts of Cite Soleil’
The search is finally over. I have seen the future of filmmaking. And it’s got Big,Big Balls…..
‘Ghosts of Cite Soleil’ : I had heard faint murmurings from the grapevine about this young,first time Danish director Asgar Leth and his purportedly excruciating and devastating cinematic excursion into the depths of depravity; the slums of Cite Soleil or City of the Sun in Haiti, designated as ‘the most dangerous place on Earth’ by the U.N. and in less polite company as the ‘asshole of the world’. The murmurings slowly grew into a rumble and that into an anguished cry for mercy. An cry in which one could somehow discern notes of release or final redemption. Much like the bleating of a blessed sacrificial goat before it’s equally blessed slaughter. People were so affected by this damn ‘thing’ for lack of a better word, that they just could not express an opinion or were too shell shocked to even try. Not express an opinion..! Now this I had to see with my own two eyes.
So on a balmy Thursday evening, my DP and I set out to the Laemmle on Sunset to witness this underground phenomenon for ourselves. The film opened with an establishing shot of a gorgeous,seductive Caribbean sunset, the kind that you watch silently and longingly with one arm around your woman and the other one resting on the sand…and then spend the rest of the evening making up for all that silence and longing…! So far so good, I thought to myself. Nothing too painful about that. My senses were lulled into a dreamy post lunch torpor accentuated by Wyclef Jean’s lilting melodies. Ahh, it was a good life…..And then the whole world turned to shit.
The next second I was unapologetically hurled into a sea of loud, angry, half naked African bodies, cacophonic patois French voices and aggressive,obnoxious,in-your-face hip hop music. The camera weaved around this schizoid tapestry like a crazed black mamba on a huge dose of angel dust. And from that point on it did not let me go. It molested me, strangulated me, kicked me in the balls, assaulted me with unrelenting vigour and threatened to snatch away the last vestiges of my humanity with nary a moment to collect my thoughts or my sanity. It was a waterfall, an avalanche of visceral sensations, a deep tongue kiss with Medusa at the very bowels of humanity, a place where Satan only goes after a hundred hits of crack cocaine….I soon realized I had been flung into the largest slum in Port-au-Prince, ‘Cite Soleil’, a volatile community of half a million tormented souls. That beautiful Caribbean sunset had been wiped off the face of the earth for good.
I risk a travesty of language and intellect to use the term ‘reality show’ in this context since it has been distorted and trivialized beyond recognition, but strangely enough I get some perverse satisfaction in calling it that; a post-apocalyptic reality show at the end of civilization, if you will…where Death is the ultimate prize, the highest accolade, cherished and coveted like a Goddess.
Director Leth has been able to go where no man,angel or demigod would dare to. His camera is at times a lover and at times a friend to that which has been shunned,forbidden,forgotten and left for dead at the very fringes of the human condition. To that where even the vultures shudder to venture for fear of being preyed upon themselves. We are taken into the world of two brothers,Tupac and Bily who are gun waving,doped up gang lords or ‘Chimeres’ (ghosts) in the ‘City of the Sun’. They are called ghosts since it is taken for granted that they will not be around too long and in a sense are already dead. It is the time when the largely corrupt and exploitative Jean Bertrand Aristide is in power and employs and arms the Chimeres to enforce his own brand of power. Indeed they are creations of a beast that feeds off it’s own offspring, the monstrous European colonial machinery that was responsible for dumping African slaves in Haiti in the first place.
The whole film takes place in real time, everything that we see and almost smell, touch and feel unfolds before our disbelieving eyes ; the battles with rival gangs,manipulation by the powers that be,the love affair between French nurse Lele and one of our main protagonists Tupac (named after the murdered American rapper),feverish telephonic pitch sessions with famous fellow Haitian Wyclef Jean (the gang lords also happen to be aspiring and highly talented hip hop artistes), births,deaths,anger,lust, jealousy and sometimes even laughter…will wonders never cease…! It is not just Access we are talking about here, the inhabitants of this universe open up to the filmmaker like their most intimate companion,their soulmate in a world which does not acknowledge the existence of one. He documents their bonding and camaraderie as well as hatred for each other, their celebrations as well as mourning, their deepest despair and their fondest hopes, their most depraved moments and their loftiest ideals. He is ONE with their universe and one wonders how he managed to get out in one piece…
The camerawork is jarring and disorienting with no importance given to aesthetic conventions, rather it externalizes the internal state of our protagonists by deliberately agitating the viewers through the use of extensive handheld work,close ups, jumpcuts and constant, hypercaffeinated movement in all directions…..The format is grainy,low res, and cheap, shot in natural light, for both day and night and sometimes in pitch darkness with just the use of a flashlight, and definitely has the desired effect.
We are told towards the end that both brothers were killed in 2004 and their lover, the French nurse Lele went back to Paris. Needless to say, even though Jean Bertrand Aristide is no longer in power, Haiti and the ‘Cite Soleil’ continue to be ravaged and torn apart by wanton violence, yet another casualty in the name of ‘progress’, another bloody bookmark in the annals of recent human history.
This is beyond Scorcese, beyond Oliver Stone and beyond Coppola. I would strongly advise anyone who even remotely considers themselves to be a human being, regardless of whether they are filmmakers or not, to go and watch this devastating visual document of the catastrophic state of the human condition today…worse than it has ever been in the last few millennia of recorded history.
As Bily would say ‘ Fuck God and Fuck Hope, I only believe in this’ (crooks his trigger finger).
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
I heard a discussion about this film on NPR couple of days ago. I’ll probably check it out sometime this week or weekend. Is it only playing at the Laemmle Sunset? It’s a terrible theatre, but if its the only one showing it, what the hell.
yeah, its the only one…the film got picked up by Thinkfilm, which is a wonder in itself, films like that barely ever see the light of day.
It’s a tragedy of the exhibition and distribution set up for small movies in America. Movies like this one will get picked up, but will not get marketed. They will screen in one small screen in a crappy multiplex like Laemmle Sunset, with 5-8 people in the theatre, and fizzle out in a week. It’s hard enough to get people into the theatres and they want them to pay $9 to watch it as well, that too in a shitty screen. Oh well, I should stop complaining. At least we get to see these films.
yeah Vijay, I dont take it for granted that I get to watch all these incredible,rare films on the big screen at the Cinematheque,FilmIndependent,Hammer,Laemmle,DGA etc…In fact there’s a whole bunch of them coming up , which I plan to catch if I’m not prepping or on location….Now that I think about it, I should probably post them for LA pfc’ers…
This is perhaps one of the most stunning reviews I’ve read that isn’t mindlessly genuflecting or hallucinogenically obfuscating. You are indeed fortunate to be able to watch these kind of movies while the choices I have in the multiplex near me or anywhere within a 1000 miles of me are ‘Naqaab — Disguised Intentions’, ‘Jhoom Barabar Jhoom’ and the coming attraction of ‘Partner’, hallelujah!
P.S: Perhaps you should give a thought to writing reviews in your spare time…(unless you already do, in which case pardon my ignorance.) Rare to read a review that’s perhaps as good as the movie.
“This is beyond Scorcese, beyond Oliver Stone and beyond Coppola” under what context are you speaking? you are a very skilled reviewer indeed, you’ve managed to mirror the films flowery language and lack of content to the T. cheers!
Hey, don’t be hatin’ on Laemmle. A lot of wonderful independent films would find it hard to get screentime if not for the Laemmle chain.
I’m usually deeply, deeply sceptical of “gritty” films made by European film-makers in Third world hotspots. The publicity material repeatedly stresses the fact that the UN called Cite Soleil the “most dangerous place on earth”.
However, apparently 8000 people were killed in the aftermath of the Aristide coup. Hardly a Burundi or Darfur as far as I can tell. That rhetorical flourish alone is enough to make it suspect.
Additionally, the film has also been accused of presenting the facts of the Haiti coup in a very biased manner, with a very pronounced anti-Aristide slant.
I was looking online for a Haitian perspective on the film when I came across this. Please do take a look and tell me what you think:
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/kokot.html#ghost
Never mind, on further reading I think the Haitian reviewer is over-racializing the matter. But I do think that the film needs to be examined more critically.
Wow vic this is a film Im going to watch – I hope and wonder if they have it here. Your review – in true vic style is powerfully vivid and articulate. Your words seem to explode out of a very deep place and there is an apparent sense of immediacy – which you have honed and directed with superb clarity of thought and through an almost intimate experience with the subject. I really enjoy your writing.
Thalassa thanks for doing all that research on my behalf, I really appreciate it…however Marguerite Laurent (the author of that article you sent me) is no saint….plz click on the link below. Also, I never explicitly said that I liked the film..it is not the kind of film that one can actually LIKE..if you get my drift…? One cannot possibly LIKE being kicked in the balls…but that’s exactly what this film does. I try to refrain from reviewing films that I like.
Also, the miscegenation (interracial sex) element in the film was barely two percent of the total narrative, but was the portion attacked by Ms.Laurent…because, guess what, she has a major axe to grind..she was accused of protecting a notorious sexual predator/child molester herself!
Also, to demolish her last argument, that the filmmakers have not shared any profits with Bily’s wife, guess what? There have been ABSOLUTELY NO PROFITS so far…it is in a very limited release with hardly any takers so far.
Best
xxx
p.s – sounds to me like you havent even seen the film…!
http://www.haiti-info.com/spip.php?article3377
Bhavani, I can only write that way about films that shake me to the core…not carefully staged and highly produced entertainers. In my personal opinion, true cinema is way beyond the written word. Words can at best be a rough blueprint…no more. I havent seen your work on screen but I can tell from your writing that you have a deep urge to surrender completely, to give yourself totally to your Muse…
Some films that affected me – City of God, The Constant Gardener, Natural Born Killers, Platoon (sorry,I used to work for Stone!) The Thin Red Line, Apocalyse Now,Rescue Dawn,The Rustling of Leaves….(cant possibly list them all).The best Indian films that I have seen in recent memory were Hazaron Khwaishein…Sarkar,Dor and Metro. It would be nice to maybe collaborate someday. Will soon tell you about what I’m working on these days…
best
xxx
Viczee,
Thanks for clarifying about Laurent’s background. Actually as you might have noted in my last comment, half-way through reading the piece I became disgusted with her racializing the issue.
It is true that I haven’t seen the film – as I said I’m usually very sceptical of films that are made by European directors on Third World trouble spots – I’ll be the first to admit I have prejudices.
However, you are right, I should only comment about this after I’ve seen the film. Will try to see it sometime soon to form my ideas.
Thank you so much for the review – I would have never known about the documentary were it not for your review.
Oh, and if I came across as an Aristide sympathizer of any sort – not a fat chance! I’d be the first person setting off fireworks when old Fidel in Cuba kicks the bucket.
Hi Viczee,
As promised I have read through your post and you certainly seem to have a talent for writing, to say the least. If this is anything to go by one can look forward to a great film from you.
All the best!