Darfur Now: A Call to Action?

Darfur Now
Directed by Ted Braun
Released November 2, 2007

This documentary boats a fairly descriptive title: it is about what is currently going on in Darfur and what people should be doing about it. Yet it is often unfocused and unorganized, favoring shots of Don Cheadle's children playing backgammon to delving further into the story of the people actually living and experiencing this hell in Darfur. The film presents six accounts of people affected by or working to end the genocide in Darfur, and powerful imagery is used to decent effect to supplement the horror tales told by the people of Darfur. The film does not necessarily tell the audience anything a casual follower of world events is unlikely to know, and presents nothing new other than to get some insight into the lives of those working from the United States and the Netherlands to create awareness and enact legislation to go after those responsible. But this multi-person story tends to focus too much on those of celebrity status (Cheadle and George Clooney) and expand on details of the personal lives of the people working to bring about change which are absolutely irrelevant to the plot. These scenes of Americans sitting in their fancy houses or working in expensive restaurants are in such contrast to the plight of those in Darfur that it seems an unwise choice for writer-director Bruan to have made to so ignorantly place the two side-by-side. The color and the sound cut out quite a bit during the second half of the film, but that could easily have been the theatre where I saw it. Like "An Inconvenient Truth", this documentary exposes something everyone has been talking a lot about but doing little to influence, but fails to deliver in any inspirational or inventive way. The end of the film is oddly hopeful, which does not match the film's tone but attempts to offer some sort of idealistic plan for the future.

C+