When seeing Radu Mihaileanu's movies I have the feeling that this director has the potential of doing masterpieces, and yet something is missing. As in 'Train de vie' the TV film 'Les Pygmees de Carlo' starts with an original idea and has some memorable scenes. And yet, same as in his previous movie the tendency of explaining too much instead of letting the cinema speak for itself spoils the general feeling and turns what could have been a reference movie into an interesting essay with some bright art film moments.
The story is of two doco film makers sent to Africa to bring to Paris a group of about 20 Pygmies for a film of director Carlo, an almost off the plot character who is leading remotely the whole action and passes in parallel medical tests towards what will be a fatal diagnostics. Mihaileanu likes to talk in his movies about contact between Africa and other civilizations, his last movie has in the center a similar type of encounter about Ethiopian immigration in Israel. Here however we are met with some kind of poor man 'Constant Gardner', the Afdrican reality seems a collection of all stereotypes about fascinating, colorful, corrupt and deadly Africa, where humanity can be found only in the depth of the jungles. The tentatives of the two heroes to bring the representative of the Pygmies tribe to the capital of the world meet the African red tape obstacles and the film that Carlo was dreaming about will be never made the way he intended it. However, it may have led to a better and more real film, as the camera of one of the two heroes will be rolling all over the trip, catching on tape not only images but the true unpolluted spirit of the world of the natives.
Here we get some of the memorable scenes, the gems specific to Mihaileanu's films. In one of them the main character, a Jew, second generation after the Holocaust tries to explain to the natives gathered as in a class of dummies the story of the Jewish people and even tell them an Yidish joke. As in other mis-communication scenes in the movie the immediate answer is appreciative hums, although it is clear nobody in the audience understands a word. On a different perspective this tells about the impossibility to tell something about the fate of the Jews or the Holocaust in any words. What is the problem, the words, or the immensity of the drama? And yet, the understanding of the universal suffering transcends the language and a moment of sublime is reached when the elder of the tribe looks into the young Jew's eyes and tells him in words that seem not to need translation that he understands the pain of his fellow man's tribe, whose forests were burned in the Holocaust.
In another sequence of anthology the laptop computer of the heroes with a Power Point presentation about the tribe and its traditions becomes the magic box that would allow the tribe members to take the trip taking with them the spirits of the ancestors. However the real trip will never happen, but these news come to the locals as some kind of release, like the loss of balance and contact with their forest and land would be too big a danger for their very existence. An explicit but so sharp message about the relationship between the civilizers and civilized, and how each other perceive what is really important.
The return home of the heroes is a failure, doubled by the news that Carlo is sick with a fatal disease and this film on its way to failure would have been his very last one. The final scene with a frozen shot and a dedication tells that this aspect is probably personally important for the director, but it is totally disconnected from the logic of the movie. We are left with an interesting making of a film in film experience, with good acting from the principal actors especially Stéphane Rideau, with food of thought about the relationship between cultures and ways of civilization, with a few scenes to remember, in another 'almost there' film of Radu Mihaileanu.
The story is of two doco film makers sent to Africa to bring to Paris a group of about 20 Pygmies for a film of director Carlo, an almost off the plot character who is leading remotely the whole action and passes in parallel medical tests towards what will be a fatal diagnostics. Mihaileanu likes to talk in his movies about contact between Africa and other civilizations, his last movie has in the center a similar type of encounter about Ethiopian immigration in Israel. Here however we are met with some kind of poor man 'Constant Gardner', the Afdrican reality seems a collection of all stereotypes about fascinating, colorful, corrupt and deadly Africa, where humanity can be found only in the depth of the jungles. The tentatives of the two heroes to bring the representative of the Pygmies tribe to the capital of the world meet the African red tape obstacles and the film that Carlo was dreaming about will be never made the way he intended it. However, it may have led to a better and more real film, as the camera of one of the two heroes will be rolling all over the trip, catching on tape not only images but the true unpolluted spirit of the world of the natives.
Here we get some of the memorable scenes, the gems specific to Mihaileanu's films. In one of them the main character, a Jew, second generation after the Holocaust tries to explain to the natives gathered as in a class of dummies the story of the Jewish people and even tell them an Yidish joke. As in other mis-communication scenes in the movie the immediate answer is appreciative hums, although it is clear nobody in the audience understands a word. On a different perspective this tells about the impossibility to tell something about the fate of the Jews or the Holocaust in any words. What is the problem, the words, or the immensity of the drama? And yet, the understanding of the universal suffering transcends the language and a moment of sublime is reached when the elder of the tribe looks into the young Jew's eyes and tells him in words that seem not to need translation that he understands the pain of his fellow man's tribe, whose forests were burned in the Holocaust.
In another sequence of anthology the laptop computer of the heroes with a Power Point presentation about the tribe and its traditions becomes the magic box that would allow the tribe members to take the trip taking with them the spirits of the ancestors. However the real trip will never happen, but these news come to the locals as some kind of release, like the loss of balance and contact with their forest and land would be too big a danger for their very existence. An explicit but so sharp message about the relationship between the civilizers and civilized, and how each other perceive what is really important.
The return home of the heroes is a failure, doubled by the news that Carlo is sick with a fatal disease and this film on its way to failure would have been his very last one. The final scene with a frozen shot and a dedication tells that this aspect is probably personally important for the director, but it is totally disconnected from the logic of the movie. We are left with an interesting making of a film in film experience, with good acting from the principal actors especially Stéphane Rideau, with food of thought about the relationship between cultures and ways of civilization, with a few scenes to remember, in another 'almost there' film of Radu Mihaileanu.
