Darwin's Other Nightmares
The Anti-Darwinists over at everyone's favorite local think tank apparently lack the requisite fighting power to stop the Northwest Film Forum from screening Darwin's Nightmare, a disturbing documentary about the ongoing ecological and social disaster in Tanzania that makes numerous overt and subtextual references to the reviled Evolutionary Theory without informing audiences that its just one theory, nor does the filmmaker Hubert Sauper make any references what-so-ever to the necessary creationist alternatives. Seattlest attended a screening recently without encountering any mobs of underevolved thumbless Children of Eve types locking arms to bar entry to the faithless.
Darwin's Nightmare is a bleak and difficult documentary to watch, filled with some of the starkest, most vivid images in film: starving kids in fist fights over bowls of rice, later sniffing glue in order to forget their hunger and fall asleep; prehistoric looking wastelands of nile perch carcasses (seen in the bottom half of this display poster) where the fishery dumps the unused fish parts; first person narratives by struggling prostitutes who entertain the Russian and European importer/exporters; children throwing malnourished dogs in to pools of rotting fish waste water for fun.
There's so much to process - the irony of the starving third world feeding the first world at all, much less to their own increasing detriment; Russia and Europe importing weapons for the illicit arms trade in various African wars under the cover of the debilitating fish trade; the inevitable and perhaps irreversible environmental devastation to one of the world's largest lakes - watching the film can leave even the most cold-hearted moviegoer restless and squirming and fighting back tears.
Seattlest spent a few minutes speculating on the meaning of the title: We've heard talk of Darwin objecting to the application of Evolutionary Theory to the social sciences, but we don't remember exactly why. Then again, maybe its just a reference to the environmental annihilation that's ever present throughout the film. Hopefully the world's smartest blog readers will apply their knowledge in the comments section and enlighten us.
The film's run has been extended this weekend at the NWFF so you still have a chance to catch it in theaters, assuming a Theocracy has not been established in the interim and you are denied entry.
