The Good Lie (Movie Review by Bob Racine)

                             1 hr & 50 min, color, 2014

If any average American citizen were to meet up with a native of a more primitive society (in this case rural Southern Sudan) new to our country and that foreign-born person were to ask the American, “Where is your village?”, how would any of us reply to the question?   Do we have “villages” in the U.S. or anything that could be characterized as one under a different name?  In the city of Columbia, Maryland where I reside, we have a small shopping mall named Wilde Lake Village, but do we deserve to call anything situated for commercial use by that title?  I doubt if our Sudanese native would understand that, because in his/her country the village is everything.  It is a kind of extended family or small tribe, just as meaningful to them as our primary families are to us, probably more.  A small community, a world within a world!  A world of extraordinary unity and allegiance and kindred minds and shared habits! 

I am sure most of us on this side of the Atlantic have seen that poster proverb emblazoned on one billboard or bumper sticker or another: “It takes a whole village to raise a child” or words very similar.  But I have often wondered who in our vast teeming population could have created such an axiom.  I wonder for the simple reason that few within our shores have ever belonged to a real village.  Some churches or synagogues or mosques approach the ideal; it depends upon the orientation or the spiritual breeding of the people who compose them.  But if you want to get the true sense of what the word means, treat yourself to a recently released motion picture entitled “The Good Lie,” an original screenplay composed by a woman named Margaret Nagle, directed by Philippe Falardeau, and released by Warner Brothers.  

After sitting through it, I am of the suspicion that it was the solidarity of village culture that enabled all those Lost Boys of Sudan to walk the hundreds of miles they did over barren and unfriendly and dangerous terrain to reach the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya where they found refuge for most of their childhoods, there awaiting the chance to travel to America.  I wonder how many of our American children suddenly and tragically bereft of parents and the structure of town and community and left homeless in a wilderness with little sense of direction or distance and without the food and water to sustain life could travel by foot for a thousand miles in search of a safe haven.  Would they have not only the stamina to make the grueling journey but the resourcefulness or the faith in themselves or in God to do it?  Would they triumph and grow to self-respecting adulthood or would their desolation segue into a version of “Lord of the Flies?”

The film revolves around four of those Sudanese children who age over thirteen years in that camp before they find themselves selected to make the journey by air westward.  All of them are of (what we would call) preschool age, when their village is bombed and strafed and their parents annihilated at the film’s opening sequence and they are left with nothing but their own devices.  One is Mamere, whose older brother Theo is captured by the enemy, leaving him to be the new “chief,” a village status derived from age and seniority.   Looking up to him are his brothers Jeremiah and Paul and his younger sister Abital.  Children leading children!  The remnant of their village!

They learn to siphon water from the ground, to obtain food by chasing a predator from its prey and feasting off the freshly slain carcass, and they even have to resort to drinking urine to quench thirst when water cannot be located.  They are plagued by the possibility of disease; some do get sick; and always not too far away are the North Sudanese soldiers bent on their annihilation.  They have no chart or compass and have to depend upon their instincts and the direction in which the sun rises or sets.  But through their rugged determination they reach the Kakuma Camp. 

One day, thirteen years later, they find their names on the posted list for deportment.  The boys by then are on the threshold of adulthood and the sister is an adolescent.  The lion’s share of the film’s footage portrays the strange life and experience of the boys in the States, separated from Abital when placements are determined in which they have no say. Fortunately they all speak English, presumably having learned the language at the camp, which proves to be a vital asset upon their arrival in America.

An employment agency counselor named Carrie (Reese Witherspoon) in Kansas City gets roped by a friend into the task of meeting the boys at the airport and transporting them to their living quarters.  This done, she prepares to get on with other business.  But the job turns out to be not that simple.  She is amazed, after she drops them off on the sidewalk in front of their new assigned residence, that they are so timid and unsure of themselves that they stand outside the house and do not move.  She has to lead them bodily into the house and get them settled.  She has to show them how to use a telephone, something they have never even seen before.  They are introduced to wall switches, to running water, and to appliances, all of which unfamiliar, and they approach their beds with awe and uncertainty – until they try them out and find them pleasurable.

Slowly she comes to realize that these young men are largely nomadic in background and have a more complicated history than she ever expected, that they are not simple statistics that can be filed away or pegs fitted into assigned slots.  The land is new; the ways of the new world they have to be taught very carefully.  Not only has she not been acquainted with their life story or their background, but she learns that she has taken on a more rigorous task than she ever imagined.  Getting them jobs is the major challenge.  And that is just for starters.

These boys eventually reshape Carrie’s life and expand her horizon as much as she expands theirs. 

Though the village by this point has been geographically left far behind, it is still very much a present reality for the three.  There is a closeness and a passionate concern each has for the others that in my judgment goes beyond what siblings in our country scattered abroad from each other retain.  Mamere never gives up hope of bringing Abital to live with them and that his captured brother Theo is still alive.  But the bonds that hold them together are soon tested by their new lifestyles; cultural barriers complicate the process, even after they are all employed.  The solidarity they have known on their journey up to that point is threatened.  Tensions arise that bring them to fierce confrontation, and Carrie is forced to become the referee.

Probably many of you reading by this point are eager to know what this “good lie (!)” is all about.  Unfortunately to explain I would have to give too much away, so I must leave the matter be for you to find out.  But I can assure everyone that in the context of the story it does make good and meaningful sense.  The sensitively well written script that mixes pathos and humor to superior effect and the splendid acting on everyone’s part make this a crystal quality work, timely, personally involving.

The characters may be fictitious, but the movie’s producers made the very wise choice of casting real life persons whose lives have been intimately touched by the refugee situation.  Mamere is played by Arnold Oceng, the son of a refugee father; Jeremiah is played by Ger Duany, Paul by Emmanuel Jel, and Abital by Kuoth Wiel – all of them Sudanese refugees themselves. 

“The Good Lie” is a saga of loss, pain, desperation, liberation and sacrifice.  Well worth everybody’s time!  The following African proverb signs off the movie most appropriately at the end of the credits: “If you want to go fast, go alone.  If you want to go far, go together.”

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.