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Salam Neighbor (2015)
Insightful Look into Refugee Life Though Not Without Its Problems
Salam Neighbor chronicles the trip of two American documentarists to a refugee camp in Syria and their interactions with the refugees over a month's time. I think that the intentions of the filmmakers were genuine; I believe that they wanted to learn more about the lives of refugees and use this documentary to gain support for the refugees. I think that they toe the line of the white savior complex, but in my opinion, they never cross too much into that. Watching a film like this, one has to wonder about the motives of the men and their financial backing. Obviously, the refugee crisis has become largely a political issue, and this is them taking a political stance for the refugees. One could try and problematize this documentary for its politics, but I think that these men genuinely want to help the refugee crisis in Syria. They claimed that they were invested in the conflict before leaving the United States and seemed to form genuine bonds with some of the refugees during their time in the camp. While in the camp, they seemed keenly aware of the fact that they had a return date set and could be pulled from the project at any point if it became too dangerous. I think that these men were really invested in this project and trying to do something positive here.
This is not to say that the film was without some issue. It seemed that, despite knowing some information about the conflict, the men seemed ill-informed about some of the Syrian cultural norms and perhaps should have worked to understand these more before arriving in the camp and perhaps studied some Arabic. The scene when they tried to send the little boy to school was also troublesome. Once more, I think that they were trying to do something good and what they thought was logical because in the United States, children don't live within a war zone. I think it would have been a good idea for them to have taken a step back and considered why the boy might not have wanted to go to school before exposing him to this trauma once more.
Welcome (2009)
An Enjoyable Film That Is Perhaps Not Realistic Enough
Lioret's Welcome tells the story of Bilal, a young Kurdish immigrant living in Calais, France, as he tries to make it to the United Kingdom for a better life and to reunite with his girlfriend. Bilal seeks the help of Simon Calamat, a French swimming instructor, to help train him to cross the English Channel to immigrate into the United Kingdom illegally.
Factually speaking, the film did portray the life of immigrants in Calais correctly. After reaching France, many immigrants do want to go further and immigrate by any means to the United Kingdom, where there is a higher standard of living and no requirement to carry identification papers that would reveal them as undocumented. Reunification of families and friends is also easier to achieve in the United Kingdom. The depiction of the camp seemed to be fairly truthful. Refugees in Calais Jungle did not have access to many facilities and lived in brutal conditions, surrounded by barbed wire as shown in the film. One thing that I would have appreciated more of in the film was the actual depiction of Bilal within the camp and how encampment affected his desire to leave for England.
Though I thoroughly enjoyed this film, one thing I must question is the plausibility of Bilal making it so close to the English shore before the British coast guard finds him. While it is possible for a person to swim the English Channel, I wonder how plausible it would be for someone like Bilal, who hadn't had much training in swimming until his brief training sessions with Simon, to cross the Channel. I suppose this might be a commercial consideration of the film, to allow the audience to cheer for a boy as he tries to do the impossible.
The Way Back (2010)
Compelling, (Somewhat) Accurate Film
Peter Weir's The Way Back is a film chronicling a group of Gulag escapees' journey to freedom in India. While I found the film enjoyable and mostly accurate to the characteristics of the Soviet Union's Gulag camp system, I must acknowledge that the story's origin is a bit fuzzy. The film was based on a nonfiction book The Long Walk, which has been disputed. Although there are records of one or two groups of Gulag escapees turning up in India, the author of the book, who claimed to have accomplished this feat, did not actually escape a Gulag.
While the origins of the story may not have been accurate, the depiction of the Gulag camp was accurate for the most part. For instance, Valka, the criminal character, had the authority in the barrack, which was true of most Gulags as guards tended to let criminals keep order. As was discussed in the film in the mining scene, heavy labor like mining work was fatal-it was just a matter of time before the inmate met their demise. Though comical, Valka's chest tattoo of Lenin and Stalin provides a good example of the blind loyalty to Stalin during World War II. Many inmates believed that their being in the Gulag was benefitting the regime and still held intense loyalty for the Communist government that had usually wrongly arrested them in the first place. Where this film fell short was showing how insanely fatal the Gulags were, especially in Siberia. Although we get a sense of the bitter conditions and their lethality in the scene where the guards allow the prisoners to take shelter in the forest away from the blizzard, I think that the film could have expanded upon how deadly a sentence to a camp like the one in The Way Back would have been.
Straying from my discussion of historical accuracy, I must acknowledge that, as a viewer, the film seemed to drag on at points, especially as the group trekked across the desert. Despite this, when I think back on the film, I wonder if the long time in the desert was of some artistic significance. I wonder if Weir consciously chose to have the scene go on and on to mirror how the escapees kept walking and walking and never seemed to make much progress through the desert.
Come See the Paradise (1990)
An Enjoyable Film That Is Not Without Its Problems
As the title of my review states, I enjoyed Come See the Paradise and feel as though it represented Japanese-American internment well, but the film did make some choices with which I do not agree.
The film did well in depicting internment. One thing that some Americans may struggle with is being critical of the country many call "the land of the free", but this film does not shy away from criticizing the United States' decision to unjustly intern those of Japanese descent during World War II. This can be seen when Lily argues with white camp officials, calling the camp a prison and when Charlie, an American citizen who barely spoke any Japanese, repatriates to Japan after the war, disgusted with the internment. Seeing a Hollywood film about American citizens encamped could open viewer's eyes to an ugly part of the United States' history and serve as a warning that freedoms can be infringed upon and that we must do our part to stop anything like this from happening within the United States again.
The film also did a decent job at showing how the camp interrupted the lives of Japanese-Americans. The Kawamura family had a thriving movie theater and a beautiful home, but all of this was taken away in an instant with encampment. Although the aftereffects of the camp are hardly explored, the Kawamura family members do not have their lives to return to in Los Angeles, showing how a camp experience can impact people even after liberation.
All this being said, the film did have its problems. Although the portrayal of these camps was realistic and critical, not nearly enough time was spent showing camp life. There was far too much buildup to encampment; I hardly think that there was much reason to start in 1936. I am also unsure if there was a need for the character of Jack. The camps were the experiences of Japanese-Americans and people of Japanese descent, so I believe the focus should have been solely on them without the inclusion of a white male character although I realize that without Dennis Quaid, the film might not have accessed as wide of an audience as it did.
As If I Am Not There (2010)
Powerful and Realistic
Juanita Wilson's As If I Am Not There is a powerful film, depicting the realities faced by Bosniaks during the Bosnian War. The film does not shy away from the brutal realities of mass murder and rape experienced in the war or from how the camp experience never leaves the survivors after liberation.
While encamped, there is a rumor among the women that a men's camp is nearby; however, this is not the case. As seen at the film's start, the men of the village were slaughtered, and this gendercide of military-aged men was widespread during the war; there would not have been an equivalent men's camp to camps for the women and children as the fathers, husbands, sons, and brothers of these women and children would have been murdered by the Serbian soldiers.
As for the rapes that occur inside of Samira's camp, these were, unfortunately, commonplace in camps during the Bosnian War. The film does well in showing how these women were abused at the hands of their Serbian captors as even children were not exempt from the sexual horrors of the camps. Some viewers might oppose the relationship between Samira and the captain, but it is important to acknowledge that their relationship could not have been consensual as it is impossible for a captor and an encamped person to have a consensual relationship inside of a camp. The captain still has complete control over Samira, and she engages in survival sex to better her own situation in the camp for which people who have never experienced encampment cannot judge her.
This film also did an great job at demonstrating the aftereffects of the camp as it did not stop at the joyous point of liberation. As result of her experience in the rape camp, Samira was left pregnant with a child and seeks out an abortion too far along in the pregnancy, being forced to carry the child full-term. It is evident how affected she is by her camp experience as she struggles to connect with her child, sobbing as she breastfeeds her newborn. The camp experience never ends for survivors; the horrors experienced in a camp will remain with them for the rest of their lives.
La vita è bella (1997)
A Good Film But Not Without Issue
Overall, I enjoyed Life Is Beautiful and felt it portrayed concentration camp life with some truth, but I acknowledge that the film was not without its issues.
One important issue that the film got right was how sudden camp life became reality to Guido and his family. Although throughout the first half of the film we can witness the rise of Nazi ideals in Italy, this does not impede on life for Guido. Guido and Dora still laugh, fall in love, and have a child despite the rising levels of antisemitism and the intensifying of the war. The quickness with which the family is thrust into the concentration camp reflects how sudden this could happen to real people during the Holocaust. Dora returns home with her mother to find her house in a disastrous states and her family gone, and we, as viewers, are quickly thrown into camp life like many were in the 1930s and 1940s.
The innocence of Guido's son reflects life in camps as well. As a young child, Giosuè cannot comprehend the situation, and in an effort to preserve his son's innocence and perhaps his own sanity, Guido turns the camp into a game. From a historical perspective, children within a camp could sometimes give the surrounding adults some sense of goodness to hold onto to get them through the dark times. Guido's persistence on keeping his son innocent to the horrors probably helped him get through the day-to-day horrors of the camp.
There were some historical issues with this film. For example, Guido and Dora would not have been able to have been married in Italy in the 1940s as he was Jewish and she was not. Also, realistically speaking, Giosuè probably would not have survived the camp experience.
One larger issue that I had with the film was where the film ended. I took no issue with the ending itself, but I think that the film should have showed how Dora and Giosuè were thrust out of camp life and back into normal life. The camp experience for survivors of the Holocaust did not end with the freeing of the camp, and most struggling to reinsert themselves into the society that they left.