Out of Frame: War Child

For instance, the humanitarian who rescued Jal is Emma McCune, a British expatriate somewhat famous in her own right for marrying Riek Machar, a leader of the South Sudanese opposition and convincing him to quit using child soldiers like Jal. But Machar's marriage to McCune opened him up to a great deal of criticism, and when McCune died in a car crash in Kenya, the incident was suspicious, to say the least. Neither director nor subject address the mystery, and Jal then says he was no longer allowed by Machar to live at McCune's house and became a homeless orphan. Surely there is a story there, but the documentary passes over it without comment. And late in the film, when Jal visits the father he hasn't seen for 18 years, a host of thorny issues arise that are barely touched. There is obvious tension, as Jal's father practically abandoned him for the war effort, and was an official in the same rebel group, the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA), that ended up employing his own son as a soldier. But there is little delving into that relationship and those old wounds. And why no one ever asks Jal why he wears an SPLA T-shirt to that meeting, knowing that it's the organization that robbed his childhood by putting a gun in his hand, remains a mystery.

More disappointing, and a weakness Chrobog does bear full responsibility for, is the failure of the film to really shine a powerful light on the practice of using children to make war. Sure, we know that Jal was a child soldier, but we get no background on the practice, and there is a surprising lack of outrage or passion of any sort in all but one of the commentators who provide analysis in the film's interview portions. Moreover, Jal's story is inspirational largely because it stands in such contrast to the lives of most former child soldiers, who, like Jal, are terribly scarred by their experiences, but most of whom, unlike Jal, are finding re-assimilating into society to be a difficult task. Jal's story has less impact without fully showing the dark to his light.

Chrobog's film is strongest when it is active, when things are actually happening rather than people just talking, such as when Jal addresses Anacostia High School students and later draws parallels to the rough life of many of those kids and his own experience, or when he travels back to Kenya and Sudan with a camera crew to reunite with his family, many of whom have had experiences as bad as his own. Especially important is the fact that Chrobog was given access to 20-year-old National Geographic documentary footage in which a camera crew interviews Jal extensively when he was only seven or eight, along with the other kids in his camp. Seeing him as a kid, still just as talkative and charismatic, is a fascinating insight into the man he's become. But far too much of the film relies on talking heads, and can get rather dry with all the talking and telling, with only the occasional clip of archival film displaying various unidentified images that tangentially relate to what's being said. All of this, along with the film's unwillingness to go deeper to the really tough questions, drags it down considerably. It's lucky, then, that it has a figure as inspirational as Emmanuel Jal at its center to lift it back up.

War Child opens tonight for one week only at E Street Cinema. The filmmakers will be in attendance at tonight's screening.