The candid, almost complicit, camera on Haiti's gangsters tells a gripping story
Ghosts of Cité Soleil (15) dir: Asger Leth
Access is the Holy Grail of the documentary film-maker, but Ghosts of Cité Soleil represents a new high-water mark in the relationship between director and subject. The film was shot in 2004 in the Haitian slum of Cité Soleil in Port-au-Prince, described by the UN as "the most dangerous place on earth", though it remains unclear whether that takes into account Croydon on a bank holiday weekend. Our guides in this corrugated-iron shanty town are two young ganglord brothers.
"Haitian 2Pac" seems the more volatile sibling. As suggested by his name, adapted from Tupac Shakur, he is in thrall to US rap culture; one of his henchmen is called 50 Cent, though curiously there's no MC Hammer or Vanilla Ice to be found. 2Pac boasts so frequently about being a gangster, brandishing his firearms and performing disgruntled raps for the camera, that it's a miracle he ever gets any actual gangstering done.
His brother Bily initially presents a gentler, more thoughtful image. Bily is a "shoot first, ask questions later" kind of person, whereas 2Pac is more "shoot first, then keep shooting". 2Pac claims that Bily wants to be president of Haiti, and some of his behaviour, such as opening fire on a friend for the most trivial infraction, would certainly qualify him for the job.
Bily and 2Pac are already in the unofficial service of the (then) president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. This democratically elected but corrupt and shambolic leader is struggling to retain power in the face of threats from rebels, and has started using the Chimerès ("ghosts"), a gangster army led by five chiefs including 2Pac and Bily, as his unofficial death squad. 2Pac calmly applies roll-on deodorant as he speaks nonchalantly about the policy of shooting rebels on sight.
What makes Ghosts of Cité Soleil so gripping, and so troublesome, is the intimacy that the Danish director Asger Leth has engineered with the Chimerès, without which there would be no picture. There is the innocent familiarity that speaks volumes, such as 2Pac allowing himself to be filmed in the shower, or in bed with a girlfriend. Then there are more disturbing scenes, when the brothers lose their cool over some perceived slight, or because someone else has a bigger gun, and you wonder how Leth has the guts to keep the camera rolling.
Several times during this film, I thought of Man Bites Dog, the 1992 mockumentary in which the complicity of a camera crew in the life of the hit man they are filming increases until they are raping and murdering along with him. Leth doesn't cross the line into criminality, but you can't be entirely sure that he wouldn't comply if 2Pac asked him to pass those bullets, or load that gun.
It doesn't make me proud to admit it, but that moral ambiguity is what gives this documentary its heat, and its edge. As with the best work of Errol Morris or Nick Broomfield, you never know from one scene to the next where your sympathies will fall. How easy it would be to sneer at Lele, a French relief worker who has come to Cité Soleil to help a community where babies are born in the street, but who ends up falling madly in love with 2Pac. (I winced at the close-up of a gunshot wound, but the only time I came close to looking away was when Lele broke the news about herself and 2Pac to poor Bily, who had the hots for her.) It's tricky to ascertain exactly what her motives are, but you would need to resist the lurid excitement of the film, or be unsympathetic to the quandaries in which these people find themselves, to pass judgement on her or anyone else here.
Leth certainly doesn't. If he keeps the editing frenzied, and if he cranks up the rap-heavy soundtrack, he is only being true to the rhythms of gang life. There's room, too, for a plangent score co-written by Wyclef Jean, who turns up in an odd scene in which he listens to 2Pac rapping on the speakerphone. The former Fugee's response to 2Pac's request to record an album - "Listen, man, we puttin' it together" - is superficially upbeat, but hardly encouraging to a gangster who gives every impression of having been born on borrowed time.
Source: http://www.newstatesman.com/200707190033
Ghosts of Cité Soleil (15) dir: Asger Leth
Access is the Holy Grail of the documentary film-maker, but Ghosts of Cité Soleil represents a new high-water mark in the relationship between director and subject. The film was shot in 2004 in the Haitian slum of Cité Soleil in Port-au-Prince, described by the UN as "the most dangerous place on earth", though it remains unclear whether that takes into account Croydon on a bank holiday weekend. Our guides in this corrugated-iron shanty town are two young ganglord brothers.
"Haitian 2Pac" seems the more volatile sibling. As suggested by his name, adapted from Tupac Shakur, he is in thrall to US rap culture; one of his henchmen is called 50 Cent, though curiously there's no MC Hammer or Vanilla Ice to be found. 2Pac boasts so frequently about being a gangster, brandishing his firearms and performing disgruntled raps for the camera, that it's a miracle he ever gets any actual gangstering done.
His brother Bily initially presents a gentler, more thoughtful image. Bily is a "shoot first, ask questions later" kind of person, whereas 2Pac is more "shoot first, then keep shooting". 2Pac claims that Bily wants to be president of Haiti, and some of his behaviour, such as opening fire on a friend for the most trivial infraction, would certainly qualify him for the job.
Bily and 2Pac are already in the unofficial service of the (then) president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. This democratically elected but corrupt and shambolic leader is struggling to retain power in the face of threats from rebels, and has started using the Chimerès ("ghosts"), a gangster army led by five chiefs including 2Pac and Bily, as his unofficial death squad. 2Pac calmly applies roll-on deodorant as he speaks nonchalantly about the policy of shooting rebels on sight.
What makes Ghosts of Cité Soleil so gripping, and so troublesome, is the intimacy that the Danish director Asger Leth has engineered with the Chimerès, without which there would be no picture. There is the innocent familiarity that speaks volumes, such as 2Pac allowing himself to be filmed in the shower, or in bed with a girlfriend. Then there are more disturbing scenes, when the brothers lose their cool over some perceived slight, or because someone else has a bigger gun, and you wonder how Leth has the guts to keep the camera rolling.
Several times during this film, I thought of Man Bites Dog, the 1992 mockumentary in which the complicity of a camera crew in the life of the hit man they are filming increases until they are raping and murdering along with him. Leth doesn't cross the line into criminality, but you can't be entirely sure that he wouldn't comply if 2Pac asked him to pass those bullets, or load that gun.
It doesn't make me proud to admit it, but that moral ambiguity is what gives this documentary its heat, and its edge. As with the best work of Errol Morris or Nick Broomfield, you never know from one scene to the next where your sympathies will fall. How easy it would be to sneer at Lele, a French relief worker who has come to Cité Soleil to help a community where babies are born in the street, but who ends up falling madly in love with 2Pac. (I winced at the close-up of a gunshot wound, but the only time I came close to looking away was when Lele broke the news about herself and 2Pac to poor Bily, who had the hots for her.) It's tricky to ascertain exactly what her motives are, but you would need to resist the lurid excitement of the film, or be unsympathetic to the quandaries in which these people find themselves, to pass judgement on her or anyone else here.
Leth certainly doesn't. If he keeps the editing frenzied, and if he cranks up the rap-heavy soundtrack, he is only being true to the rhythms of gang life. There's room, too, for a plangent score co-written by Wyclef Jean, who turns up in an odd scene in which he listens to 2Pac rapping on the speakerphone. The former Fugee's response to 2Pac's request to record an album - "Listen, man, we puttin' it together" - is superficially upbeat, but hardly encouraging to a gangster who gives every impression of having been born on borrowed time.
Source: http://www.newstatesman.com/200707190033
