...engaging and discerning culture, as a way of life...

February 22, 2005

Beyond Borders - 4

A film about refugee camps and issues of hunger, disease, and death, with the obligatory love story thrown in to make it marketable to Hollywood (Yes, the writer even said this). The love story is horribly unbelievable, but the other story line is pretty good, and does a good job asking the questions and dealing with the problems that come into play in the complexity of world politics and solving huge societal problems. There is the undercurrent that the CIA is funding all this, even though these are NGO's. I think that the movie just isn't honest enough, the people you end up caring about are the main characters whose only real problem is that they happen to be committed to other people and places, while imagining that they are in love with each other. Imagining might be harsh, but that is how it is portrayed in the film. Overall, I liked how the refugee, and social problems were not taken lightly when they were talked about, but the love story kind of distracts from this theme.

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