Since the 1980's, Uganda has been in a state of civil war, with the nation's leadership violently contested by a revolutionary force known as the Lord's Resistance Army (or L.R.A.). The fighting is fiercest in the North of Uganda, and there the L.R.A. recruit many of their soldiers by abducting children from refugee camps and homes in the poverty-stricken villages, where electricity and running water are still luxuries known only to a few. However, in the village of Patongo, located deep in Uganda's war zone, a group of students (many of whom escaped from the clutches of the L.R.A.) struggles to rise above the violence and desperation that surrounds them. Each year, a student music festival is held in Kampala, Uganda's capitol city, in which children from around the country compete for prizes in performing traditional music and dance. When the students of the Patongo Primary School are invited to compete for the first time, the children are both thrilled at their opportunity and determined to prove that in a place of violence and want, creativity and talent can still take root. War Dance is a documentary about the Patongo Primary School's long journey to the Kampala Music Festival and the experiences, both good and bad, which informed them. War Dance received its world premiere at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review by All Movie Guide
All Movie Guide
is neutral about it.
In War/Dance directors Sean and Andrea Nix Fine follow a group of children living in a refugee camp from the Patongo Primary School as they attempt to win Uganda's National Music Competition. Like similarly structured documentaries before it, from
Spellbound to
Mad Hot Ballroom, War/Dance benefits from the sympathy evoked by kids striving to succeed and an inherit sports story that can be easily grafted over the messiness of real life. Though technically assured these films tend to go for the easy emotional high over the patient cinema verite character studies that result in complex societal portraits like in the touchstone
Hoop Dreams.
Accordingly, the finest moments in War/Dance come from the naturalistic moments when the camera simply observes the children. Sean, who also handled the cinematography, has a good feel for natural light and color, playing the bright blues, purples and greens of the children's clothing against the dirt and dust of the refugee camp. But the Fines are so pushy with directorial interference that such moments are scarce. Too many of the shots look fussy and slick with a broad manipulative pull reminiscent of advertising. Confessional camera interviews with the featured children -- Rose, Dominic and Nancy -- are reminiscent of reality television techniques with a similar purpose of creating a superficial viewer/subject relationship.
Most uncomfortable are scenes where the children are brought back to their former home, village, or place of abduction and made to talk about the unimaginably horrific experiences that led to they're ending up at a refugee camp. These trips feel set-up, a gross exploitation of their pain. From a filmmaking point of few, the story does not unfold with any sense of natural discovery here, rather it's forced on us and the children through staged confrontation. When Nancy howls over her father's makeshift grave, the inappropriate intrusion of the spectator is palpable. (Her mother tells her not to because the noise might attract guerilla soldiers.) The camera lingers at a short distance, seemingly embarrassed to be there.
The first half of the movie, when the children are preparing to travel to Kampala for the competition, is the "war" portion. Once they travel to the modern city for the "dance," the movie concentrates on the reassuring and comfortable competition story. As one child touchingly states, "I'm excited to see what peace looks like." Having witnessed the horrors of their lives we now see the beauty, life, and possibility of art.
The success of the children is certainly uplifting, if predictable given its predecessors. But the duality of the structure is awfully cut and dry. The idea of a dance competition being placed in comparison to the horrors of war is a flimsy conceit. There is no doubt ample material for a probing documentary of the children's lives, but the Fines seemed determine to shoehorn their feel good story in instead.
War/Dance won the documentary directing prize at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide