The Reel Critic God Grew Tired of Us

Author: Josh Wessler

"God Grew Tired of Us" is a powerful but flawed documentary about crossing invisible political boundaries that feel more like brick walls. As political refugees from Sudan, the subjects of the movie are afforded homes and the opportunities to work in the United States. Yet, the problems they face are largely psychological - the vivid memories of war and lost relationships. At one point we hear of a Sudanese immigrant who is found wandering the streets in a state of mental distress. The line that separates war in Sudan from stability in the United States is anything but certain.

After the Sudanese Civil War restarted in 1983, 27,000 homeless, young boys (known as the Lost Boys) spent the next decade fleeing violence and staying in refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya. The documentary's main characters are the fortunate ones who procured flights out of Kenya and pursue working permits in the United States - many of these men have been attending benefit screenings and speaking about their experiences.

As the movie's title suggests, there is a distinct biblical undercurrent. The Lost Boys, following their exile from fertile lands along the Nile, suffer a trial through the desert and emerge from the "wilderness" starving and devastated. This is poetic, but ultimately, unfair because it assigns storybook qualities to human subjects.

The filmmakers want us to realize that the problems faced by Sudanese refugees are problems faced by people in our neighborhoods. The film is essentially part of a campaign to raise awareness and funds for programs like the New Sudan Education Initiative, an international Burlington-based group working to bring more schools to southern Sudan. As part of a grassroots movement, the film has garnered praise from audiences at Sundance Film Festival as well as support from local initiatives like the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program. Yet, "God Grew Tired of Us" can and should be judged as a movie in its own right. For most audiences, such criticism will seem superficial. But to merely capture a story, package it and distribute it is not the same as doing it justice.

At times, the film feels like a reality television show. Though the photography is lush, the interviewers are not very talented and the responses they get are not very diverse. Many of the questions are pointed at how America is different from life at home. What results is a semi-critique of American culture in general. Roasting Americans for being rude and wasteful may be fun, but it's beside the point. The result is that the filmmakers resort to antiquated stereotypes that lampoon western culture as the antithesis to the pristine, innocent landscape of colonized countries. The most blatant expression of this simplification is the portrayal of the Lost Boys as biblical characters, or as Peter Pan's na've crew of wandering orphans.

The film's structure is relatively straight-forward. We follow the three main characters, John Dau, Daniel Abul Pach and Panther Bior) as they move into their first apartments, find new jobs and acclimate to the new culture. Between these stagy moments their introspections float across the new and sometimes dangerous landscapes of their American world. Nicole Kidman narrates but has no other participation in the film, confirming our lurking concern that this is an anthropological video to be shown on National Geographic. Though she brings star power (along with executive producer Brad Pitt), the exclusion of the filmmakers' voices is impersonal.

From a wider perspective, the film is much like a large geologic feature. Regardless of its faults, it is broad in its ambition and its appeal. The small cracks that run through it lose meaning because it provides a solid foundation for a more important political movement - one that has brought attention and donor money to one of the most disgraceful examples of diplomatic negligence, and to the efforts to bring education and stability to the Sudan.