Film Festival Film #3: Moloch Tropical

[bcholmes]

I wish I could report enjoying this film. But I just think it's an ugly bucket of anti-Aristide propaganda.

It's 2004 in Haiti, and a fictional President of the country is living a life of opulence and excess in the "President's citadel" (the film was set in Citadelle Laferriére, near Kapayisyen. We quickly establish that the president is under political fire due to increasing numbers of protests and demonstrations. The president's response to this is to go on television to demand that France pay reparations in the amount of $21,685,135,671.48 (this number was part of an actual reparations campaign that Aristide was working on in Haiti).

It's also clear that the president is a philanderer who keeps making crude and vulgar statements about sex to people around him: a member of his serving staff (that he pursues throughout the film) and a visiting actress from the US.

The president also has, locked up in his basement dungeon, a radio-show journalist, Gérald who was initially supportive of the president, but who had recently taken to criticizing the president's authoritative handling of the country. For his troubles, the president had locked him up in the dungeon and periodically tortured. (The analogy is to Jean Dominique -- a murdered Haitian journalist; some groups have tried to blame Aristide for Dominique's murder because Dominique was critical of Aristide. Dominique was the subject of Johnathan Demme's The Agronomist). The fictional journalist was eventually assassinated (by necklacing) on the orders of the fictional president.

It's also through a crucial scene with Gèrald that we learn that the president was a former priest who worked in Haiti's slums.

When the demonstrations continue to escalate in intensity, the president's advisers convince him to release "the Chimères" -- gangs who will violently attack the demonstrators. This action alienates the president's allies in the American government, and the president's wife and advisers keep insisting that Washington was going to "drop them".

Finally, the action culminates in the 200th anniversary celebrations of Haitian Independence. The president, who hasn't taken his meds, delivers a crazed speech likening himself to Jesus and Joan of Arc. Then, at an after-reception, he paws the servant woman from whom he's been trying to solicit sex throughout the movie. The woman's boyfriend, who is a saxophonist at the reception, sees this and attacks the president. The saxophonist is shot, and this is the final incident that cements the foreign world's enmity toward the Haitian president. The next day, the president is coerced, by the American Ambassador, to sign a resignation letter and leave the country.

I booed the film when the credits rolled.

Raoul Peck's comments about the film, both before and after, seemed to downplay the fact that the film was so obviously inspired by the propaganda stories about Aristide, suggesting that the film was a treatment about what happens when elected leaders -- including first world leaders -- are given unchecked power. (His primary other example of such a leader was Bill Clinton). A couple of dumb questions were asked, but someone I know from Haiti activism raised the point about the US, Canada and France orchestrating a coup. Peck clearly stated that he didn't believe the stories that Aristide was kidnapped, and suggested that Aristide and the US must have been on the same side for most of Aristide's period in power.

While a number of people around me clapped vigorously for the film, I had the sense that there was a much more mixed response at the back of the room.

I also got the strong sense that the Q&A was quite a bit shorter than other Q&A's I've been to, and I wondered if there was a concern about audience hostility.