Shared Darkness

One Campaign recently, and it reminded me of Abbas Kiarostami’s ABC
Africa. A documentary examination of the ravages of war, poverty and AIDS
in Uganda, ABC Africa is a film that
malingers and dawdles quite a good bit as it creates loose yet moving
impressions rather than a concrete arc. Yet it also reminds us that feeling is
indeed much stronger than thought; the at-odds sensations of joyfulness and
despair that it produces serve as a powerful exemplar that aid is not about some vague financial
hand-out, but a hand up for a people whom opportunity and modernity has largely
forgotten.

Over the course of a 10-day visit to the country (his
first), Iranian director Kiarostami captures the faces of several hundred of
Uganda’s estimated 1.6 million orphans, the number a result of a mid-1980s
civil war and crippling battle with AIDS and malaria. He spends some time
delving into an International Fund for Agricultural Development program that
allows/mandates villagers to buy into a collective agenda that protects them,
not unlike insurance, against life’s valleys.

Mostly, though, Kiarostami (Taste of Cherry, The
Wind Will Carry Us) uses a very nonjudgmental lens, gently elucidating
greater meaning through context and only occasionally prodding his subjects.
The film’s form is really quite loose — sometimes too much so, honestly. A lot of
the movie’s 84-minute running time is comprised of the simple, impressionistic,
non-narrated recording of everyday life — the wonderment with which kids behold
a camera, running after him like American suburbanites chasing an ice cream
truck — and a little of this goes a long way. When Kiarostami lingers at a
prophylactic billboard blacked out, presumably by staunchly Catholic
proponents of abstinence-only sex education, or, later in the movie, comes
across an Austrian couple adopting a little African girl, you wish the film
pursued these story strands with a little more dynamism.

In the end, ABC Africa is shattering in its own
glancing way, but not necessarily philosophically profound. There’s no
consensus or even, really, a finely honed inquisitiveness. Kiarostami documents
wholeheartedly, but without any sort of accompanying filter or prism; this
creates a deeply felt movie — and one still overall very worthwhile — but
also one that also doesn’t completely live up to your fullest expectations of what it
could be.

DVD bonus features include a theatrical trailer for the film and
a 55-minute mini-documentary from Pat Collins and Fergus Daly, entitled Abbas Kiarostami: The Art of Living,
which delves further into the director’s diverse interests (including poetry
and photography) as well as his filmography. A tri-fold booklet also excerpts
an interview between Scott Foundas and Kiarostami, the rest of which is
available via an included Web link. To purchase the film via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) B- (Disc)