Dancing Around A Violent Subject
For as long as there have been documentaries, there has been the debate over aesthetics: How openly, or artfully, should elements such as lighting, framing, cropping, posing, and narration be used when we are meant to be watching a realistic film about the world in which we live?
This debate reaches something of a critical mass with "War/ Dance," a documentary opening today that may even have the casual moviegoer questioning things. Something about this film feels too pristine and glossy, its agony captured with a bit too much beauty and its optimism poured on a bit too thick for any of the subject matter to register as being "true."
Of course, every documentary is a game of careful manipulation. Many documentarians approach their subjects and their narrative arcs with the same strategic mentality as a director of fiction. The big problems arise when a documentary's artistic flourishes appear to contradict the subject matter. The stylized "War/Dance," which earned its directors, Sean Fine and Andrea Nix, directing awards at this year's Sundance Film Festival, is a formally rigid and carefully choreographed movie with a glossy shine that seems out of place amid the real-life chaos at its center. The final product feels artificial and manipulative. Then again, given the way Mr. Fine and Ms. Nix try to fuse the titular topics, which lack clear similarities, this style-versus-substance disconnect may have been unavoidable. Setting the documentary at the Patongo Primary School, a building housed within the Patongo refugee camp that shelters those who have escaped the clutches of the civil war that has enveloped Uganda for two decades, the filmmakers seek to simultaneously follow the school's preparations for a nationwide music competition and offer a chilling account of what these students endured before they fled to the sanctuary of the refugee camp.
Mr. Fine and Ms. Nix zero in on the ordeals of three young competitors: a singer, a xylophone player, and a dancer, all of whom address the camera directly to tell their tales of unspeakable violence and barbarism. In between their monologues, we watch them prepare for a music competition we don't quite understand, unsure if they have the slightest chance to do well.
While there is certainly a disjointed nature to the story — mixing something as fluffy as "Spellbound" or "Bring It On" with a first-hand account of crimes against humanity — there's something more alarming about how carefully managed and manicured these horror stories appear onscreen. More than once, the children's painful monologues seem staged, almost coached, and the pristine way in which their agony — even their tears — is used is unsettling.
The result is not all that different from an airbrushed photograph. In "War/Dance," we're left detached, not quite feeling the passion of these kids for the upcoming competition, nor drawn into the reality of the hell they have somehow escaped. Rather than address a fascinating juxtaposition — children having fun mere miles from death and devastation — the filmmakers try to segue seamlessly from war to dance and back, seeking poignancy everywhere. By making the war seem softer, by taking the dancing so seriously, "War/Dance" may disappoint everyone.
ssnyder@nysun.com
