Paste Magazine June/July 2010 : Page 97
LIVING IN EMERGENCY SOUTH OF THE BORDER LIVING IN EMERGENCY: STORIES OF DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS OUT NOW DIRECTOR: Mark N. Hopkins CINEMATOGRAPHER: Sebastian Ischer STUDIO: Red Door Pictures Eye-opening documen-tary cuts to the heart As Dr. Arnaud Jeannin explains early on in Living in Emergency, “Helping to stop the suffering of people is tremendously reward-ing… although it fucks you up a bit.” This statement defines the complex nature of this brutally objective film, which chronicles four doctors struggling through their time with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). Taking an intimate perspective of the NGO (which stations 27,000 workers in nearly 60 countries), the film’s grainy footage cuts past surface idealism to expose the mental cost that war and suffering in-flict on self-described “bourgeoi-sie” Good Samaritans. It’s nearly impossible to describe their dis-plays of valor as anything less than inspiring, but the doctors here are far from saints; they’re argumentative human beings compelled to help their imper-fect selves by helping others. The resulting portrait puts the fundamental issues of human rights, politics and self-sacrifice in a hyper-realistic context, of-fering a provocative backdrop to the universal healthcare argument. SEAN EDGAR 9.2 SOUTH OF THE BORDER OUT NOW DIRECTOR: Oliver Stone WRITERS: Tariq Ali, Mark Weisbrot STUDIO: Cinema Libre Chávez doc almost goes south South of the Border, the spiri-tual sequel to director Oliver Stone’s Looking for Fidel and Comandante, is an academic, interview-driven study of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez—and it seems almost subdued, to the infamously bombastic director’s credit. Bor-der aims to recast the rise of leftist leaders in South America not as caricatures of freedom-hating dictators, but as long-percolating rejections of imperialism. What South of the Border has in access—face-time with Chávez, Bolivian president Evo Morales and Raúl Castro— it lacks in memorable moments. Stone’s attempts to humanize leaders by showing them play-ing soccer (Morales) or falling off a bike at their childhood home (Chávez) are awkward. Still, his defenses of them are passionate and timely, as is his critique of a “predatory [capital-ism] that really destroys people.” JEFF VRABEL 6.8 !Living in Emergency photo courtesy of Red Door Pictures
