GOD GREW TIRED OF US

Written and Directed by Christopher Dillon Quinn
Co-Directed by Tommy Walker


Unidentified Lost Boy (holding a bottle of Pepsi up to the camera):
This is, in my country, we call it Coca-Cola.”

How often do critics and audiences agree on something? I think we can all admit it’s somewhat rare. So when I heard that documentary, GOD GREW TIRED OF US, had managed to win both the Audience Prize and the Grand Jury Prize at last year’s Sundance festival, I was certainly intrigued. However, when I finally caught the trailer, skepticism settled in. The film appeared to be some sort of social experiment where young, African men were transplanted into America with an array of comedic mishaps to follow. What could be funnier than watching the unexposed baffled over how to use an escalator? Still, I was not deterred. I would see with my own eyes what movie had managed to appease the masses and the minutiae-oriented. Proving once again that you cannot judge a movie by its proverbial cover, GOD GREW TIRED OF US is a unique and rare experience that burrows its way into your mind and soul, forcing you to see your world and the world outside your world through the eyes of a wide-eyed stranger.


In 1983, the second Sudanese Civil war began. Over 27,000 young boys and girls (many more boys than girls as girls were often snatched up by attackers to be raped and/or turned into slaves first) fled their villages and journeyed to refugee relief camps in bordering countries, Ethiopia and Kenya. The treks lasted a few years and only 12,000 managed to reach their destinations. These camps became their new homes, in some cases for fifteen years. In 2001, an aid program was put in place to bring 3800 young men over to the United States. The program was called The Lost Boys of Sudan. It was at this point that filmmakers Christopher Dillon Quinn and Tommy Walker made their way to the refugee camp in Kakuma, Kenya. They would follow three lost boys as they traveled across the Atlantic Ocean to begin their new life. Using archival footage to demonstrate the horrendous experience endured by these young men in their boyhood, Quinn ensures that his audience understands where these men came from and what family and community means to them before he shows their worlds being turned upside down.


Though the Lost Boys’ coming face to face with electricity and the subtle differences between turning a light on at the source or by using the wall switch can be comedic, their introduction to Western society is more telling of the natives than anything else. Coming from a past that at one point included eating mud as a source of water while in the desert, must make the concept of testing the water coming from your shower head until it is just right before stepping underneath it seem downright extravagant. Excessive is a Western way of life for those who can afford it. Even those who can’t live above their means to appear that they can. When the Lost Boys walk down the aisles of a large chain grocery store, awe beams from their eyes. The point is only further proven when they are offered a taste of a sugar doughnut smothered in sprinkles. They each take tiny bites as if unsure of what form of ridiculousness they’re biting into. Everyone around them walks up and down the grocery store aisles as if they do it every day and think nothing of it. I would be doing the same and GOD GREW TIRED OF US, without being accusatory or judgmental, draws your attention to how much you take for granted on a daily basis. It’ll get you thinking about your supposed needs the next time you bite into a doughnut of your own.


What gives GOD GREW TIRED OF US its deeper, more substantial meaning is the decision to not just expose the culture shock the Lost Boys endure as if they were guinea pigs put on screen for our privileged perspectives to devour. The film goes further when it follows the Lost Boys as they cement their lives in the United States over a period of three years. The illusion wears off when you have to work three jobs to afford your basic needs while sending money to your family back in Africa that you haven’t seen in over fifteen years. America the beautiful quickly becomes a very lonely place that feels very far from home. Despite having opportunity and an abundance of everything, the Lost Boys still miss the Sudan. GOD GREW TIRED OF US is respectful of both its subjects and its audience, always sure never to demean one for the sake of the other. Maybe this is why it has captured the attention of critics and audiences alike; its humbling, thought-provoking nature levels the distance between the two, where each group feels better than the other, allowing each to see that they are no different from each other when faced with the bigger picture of humanity and its arduous journey towards global compassion.

WAITRESS

Written and Directed by Adrienne Shelley



Jenna: I was addicted to saying things and having them matter to someone.

Somewhere, someone is making a pie that is all their own. They have been to the grocery store; they have chosen the best ingredients. They have a recipe in their head that might have once been their mother’s or might have come to them while they waited for the bus. And though there may be situations or circumstances in their lives that may be keeping them from the happiness they deserve, for the time it will take to prepare their warm treat, they will be focused on the act of creation itself. That same kind of care is baked into writer/director Adrienne Shelley’s Sundance darling, WAITRESS. Like the film’s heroine, Jenna (Keri Russell) who bakes to escape from her dreary, hopeless life, Shelley ensures that WAITRESS is the result of blending all the right ingredients, not over baking and gently sifting in just the right amount of love whenever necessary.


If WAITRESS were itself a pie, it would taste like the perfect combination of different flavours coming to life on your tongue one after the other instead of all at once. It would be rich, not overly sweet. Realism gives this romantic comedy its affluence. Jenna plays a waitress who works thankless hours at a pie shop outside of town. She is married to a controlling, abusive husband (played by a humanely needy Jeremy Sisto) and has just discovered that she is pregnant. She thought her life was going nowhere before but the baby news shut the oven door for good on whatever dreams she still held on to. Russell plays Jenna like a woman resigned to her fate. She is not necessarily unhappy in her day-to-day interactions; she merely does not believe that any good will come to her in her life. None has come thus far so why should she expect anything different from the future? She is not a pessimist but a pragmatist. While the dead-end career/deadbeat husband angle has been played out before, Shelley makes sure to avoid cliché with a sensitive script that allows for her characters to make sensible choices rather than typical ones that define the genre.


The relationship that is perhaps treated most delicately and also becomes the central relationship in the film is the one that forms between Jenna and her new gynecologist, Dr. Pomatter (Nathan Fillion). After an initially uncomfortable meeting, the two start an affair that finds Jenna following her pregnancy very closely with what seems like weekly visits to her doctor. Affairs are very tricky to sell on film as the romance has the extra challenge of overshadowing the innocent partners that are left at home and the undue hurt that is caused to them. In Jenna’s case, the woman has got it so rough; you want her to have this happiness. What value do the vows she made to her husband have when he essentially manipulated her into marrying him in the first place so that he would never be alone? Russell makes it boisterously enjoyable to watch Jenna realize that she can actually make choices that control her own destiny. They may not be ideal but they can bring smiles to her face again. And as for Dr. Pomatter and his involvement, Shelley wisely chooses not to show his wife until much later on or explain away why he is cheating. In the end, it isn’t his story and all that matters is that he’s there and he sees Jenna for the wondrous woman she is.


WAITRESS is easy to fall in love with. After all, isn’t there a little waitress in all of us? To varying degrees, we all wish that something about our lives had turned out differently. If we’re lucky there are elements that we are happy with but there is always going to be something we don’t feel we’ve explored to its fullest or opportunities we feel we’ve been cheated out of. Let this movie and its creation be a lesson to us all to enjoy the moments where we feel happy just making a pie, as those are the moments that matter and you never know what life has in mind for you next.

Before she could witness the critical success and audience reaction to her film, a construction worker killed writer/director Adrienne Shelley over a noise dispute in her building.

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE

Written by Michael Arndt
Directed by Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE is this year’s Sundance breakout and nearly all the press its received thus far has lauded it as, well, a little ray of sunshine to carry audiences through the last month of summer. It is the independent underdog that will tickle your funny bone, stimulate your mind and warm your heart. This little movie has so much to live up to and it has barely even gone wide at the moment I am writing this. LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE isn’t generating its own buzz; it’s having its buzz generated by the machine that wants so badly for it to be that movie it could. Y’know which one I’m talking about. The smaller, simpler movie that allows a more mature audience to wind down their summer, to let the ringing in their ears from all the explosive blockbusters subside. What the machine doesn’t understand is that the movie that fills that particular void is not manufactured. It is genuine and it earns that honour all by itself.

This honour is not one I feel LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE would have earned if it weren’t manufactured for it. Albeit an endearing film with authentic moments of hilarity and sentiment, it is often disconnected and unresolved. The dual director team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris create a believable family unit by giving each member their own personal touch. Dad is a failed motivational speaker; Mom has to deal with loser dad; Grandpa has a heroine problem; older brother has taken a vow of silence until he becomes a fighter pilot; and gay uncle Frank is fresh out of the hospital after trying to kill himself. Dealing themselves such a diverse hand of characters leaves many opportunities to cross the line between quirky and just plain awkward, which they do more often then they should. Then of course there’s Little Miss Sunshine wannabe herself, Olive. With an earnest enthusiasm and innocence beaming from her face (like a ray of … sorry), untouched and uncorrupted Olive reminds the family that they are in fact a family. It’s a lovely story but it is one that only takes shape in the final moments of the film. Prior to that, each character’s individual problems guide all of their own motivations and they only barely have any depth past these problems. Shifting each characters’ focus outwards gives the film some much needed structure but it leaves many an issue either unresolved or resolved far too quickly.


The ensemble cast of LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE reigns as the true heart of this organism. Cramped together in their yellow mini-bus, many different personalities fester. Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette are the heads of the family. Collette is merely a device to highlight the failures of her husband through her aggravation with him. Kinnear’s role however is hefty and he stridently carries that weight as an emasculated patriarch who preaches his failed life lessons to his daughter because she is the only one still buying them. Like another successful family piece, Noah Baumbach’s THE SQUID AND THE WHALE, the influence of the parents on the children manifests before your eyes in a difficult and painful fashion. Steve Carrell plays suicidal uncle, Frank, like a seemingly dormant volcano that may or may not erupt. You just can’t tell. His mystery is heartening and shows promise for his developing capabilities.

As a critic, shedding expectations is a higher state of being I try to achieve before I watch anything. I don’t read other reviews before I see the movie or even before I sit down to write my own, all as an effort to keep it real (dawg). It only takes a quick glance at a magazine cover to get whether people are hating, liking or really loving a movie so it is hard to avoid entirely. But as much as I try to approach each film with a fresh piece of paper to write on, buzz manages to influence the way we see things. When I’m told that something is really solid and it isn’t, even just a little, my disappointment is magnified. LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE has so many things going for it that what it is lacking makes it all the more frustrating because you really want it to live up to the hype. Still ...