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Lumumba,
2001, 115 minutes, Rated R
By Carla Robinson
Lumumba
is the kind of theatrical experience that doesn't come down the pike
very often. It's a film that engages the entire being - mind, body,
and spirit. If you haven't had such a cinematic encounter in a while,
it will jar you, leaving you feeling like you've simultaneously
completed an aerobics class and a history exam. An intellectual artist
of the highest order, Haitian-born filmmaker Raoul Peck spent more
than ten years getting the film made.
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In an interview, Peck
said that he chose to do a film about slain Congo leader Patrice
Lumumba because of his own roots in the besieged African country.
"My family went to the Congo in 1961 to replace the Belgians who
had left," Peck revealed. "It is not a well-known story, but
a lot of Haitians were fleeing the [François "Papa Doc"]
Duvalier regime. Doctors, professionals, engineers. My father is an
agronomist. So, I grew up partly in the Congo. That's why the Congo
and Lumumba is also my story."
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It's a story Peck had to reconcile
before he could tell it. He remembers struggling to come to terms with
Lumumba because he had read so much that was negative about him. His
journey to locate the man behind the myth uncovered a self-educated,
principled leader caught in a political maelstrom. "We see him as
naïve," Peck said. "But he wasn't dealing with a homogenous
body of politicians who knew what they were doing. They were all
playing at this thing that they did not control. The Belgians, the
Americans, it was lot of plotting every day for the next day…. It
was really a war, East against West, the rest of the world against
Lumumba, it was a very strange situation."
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After making the poetic and personal
documentary Lumumba: Death of a Prophet, in 1992, Peck found that the
Congo's story was so ripe for fiction, and so deserving of a broader
audience, that he set about the demanding work of making a feature
film. "We knew we would only have one shot for a film like this
and we wanted it to be as close to mainstream as possible," he
said, "so that it could go around the world and be
accepted." Indeed, the film feels like a fictitious political
thriller, but Peck is the first to bring clarification on this issue.
"I didn't have to invent anything, not even secondary
characters," he said. "In fact, I had to take out events
that were not totally credible. All the things that happened in
between those big scenes that I wrote are unbelievable…. It was
like, the whole world was in the Congo."
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And Peck would like the whole world to
return to the Congo in awareness. "When I see a report on the
Congo, it's like 'It's a faraway country, they are killing themselves
and we would like to do something but they are responsible' - as if
it's another world, another planet…. What I try to show somehow is
that we are linked. It's the same small planet."
M
October 2001
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