Darwin's Nightmare
by Chris Dashiell

It is a rare documentary, even in our time that is seeing a sort of documentary renaissance, that so envelops its subject with an intimate sense of contact, connection and understanding, that we come away profoundly transformed by the experience. Such a film is Darwin's Nightmare, directed by Hubert Sauper.

We begin at Lake Victoria in Tanzania, where large transport planes are constantly arriving and taking off from the airport at Mwanza. They are mostly Russian planes, as it turns out because they carry a bigger load and they're cheaper. The cargo they're taking out is the Nile perch, a fish that is sometimes more than six feet long. The fish was introduced to Lake Victoria fifty years ago, and gradually has killed off most of the smaller species, and posing a threat to the ecological survival of the lake itself.

It's part of the brilliance of the film that this fact is only a starting point symbolizing the larger crisis of global capitalism and its pernicious effect on the inhabitants of this African country. The multimillion-dollar business of fishing the Nile perch benefits European companies and local factory owners. Sauber, who seems to have unlimited access to everyone, interviews them and the cargo pilots, and we also meet impoverished fishermen and other fish workers, along with prostitutes and street kids, all suffering poverty on an inhuman scale. They can't afford the fish themselves; all they get is the remains, and in one harrowing sequence we experience the hellish atmosphere of a smoky outdoor fish factory where people dry out and then fry the perch carcasses which are often swarming with maggots and emitting dangerous ammonia gas. As women prostitute themselves to survive, the AIDS virus spreads like wildfire, while the fishing camps have no medical facilities or supplies. Starvation is an ever-present reality. Meanwhile we see representatives from the European Union talking about how advanced the fish industry is.

The film centers itself wholly upon the candid on-site words and actions of the people involved, so that whatever "case" is made seems to unfold in the same way it might have for a visiting observer such as Sauper. It's all the more remarkable, then, that this loose approach, through which the complexities of this corner of the world reveal themselves in concrete detail rather than discussion of broader issues, comes together with striking aesthetic clarity and fullness. At one point near the end, a coming storm neatly accentuates the words of a witness, as if nature herself was providing the film with thematic support.

Sauper has found English-speakers, for the most part, to allow us our view into the increasingly painful reality of life for the poor around the lake. One fisherman, who moonlights as a security guard, explains how war can be a good thing, since soldiers get regular pay and decent food. A young man living on the streets tells how he left the desolating poverty of his village to become a "citizen of the world," while carefully explaining the tragic predicament of the other kids. Many of the younger ones huff fumes from burning plastic, which helps them survive being sodomized by older boys without feeling too much pain.

The Russian pilots are given a good deal of screen time, and the film takes a non-judgmental view of their situation. In all cases, Sauber's soft off-screen voice continues asking difficult questions. Again and again he returns to the issue of what the planes are bringing into Tanzania. We know they're taking the fish out to Europe, but what are they bringing in? None of the pilots will answer this question, nor will the factory owners. When the truth finally becomes clear, we realize that we are not witnessing some unavoidable tragedy, but a sinister and deadly form of neo-colonialism.