God Grew Tired of Us

"If the war is still, I cannot come to Sudan."

I expected some level of jingoism from God Grew Tired of Us, or at least a hint of patriotic genuflection. It’s the story of the Lost Boys of Sudan — the group of Sudanese men the American government relocated stateside in 2001 — and their transition from the desperation of their Kenyan refugee camp to a working class existence in exotic locales such as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Buffalo, New York. The obvious move would be to do what our President did at this week’s State of the Union address when he proudly introduced NBA player Dikembe Mutombo as a cheerfully assimilated African export: this is the land of opportunity, universally accepting and majestic in its equality, and the Lost Boys, fish out of water though they may be, soon adjust to their wonderfully American new lives and become modern citizens. When, in the film’s early Kenya scenes, one of them announces that he’s never used electricity before and he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to do it, my heart sank a little.

But Christopher Quinn’s film doesn’t go down this treacherous road; nor does it see good-hearted whites as the saviors of third-world blacks. The United States is, by all objective accounts, a better place to exist than a Kenyan refugee camp, and the movie recognizes some understandable moments of culture shock: flushing toilets, showers, supermarkets. As someone who immigrated from the relatively more prosperous St. Petersburg, Russia, at the age of nine, I too was rather struck when I first saw an American grocery store. God Grew Tired of Us gives us these gratifying moments, but it doesn’t linger. Instead it shows, sometimes subtly and sometimes less so, why relocating these people to America was not — and could not have been — the answer, though it may have been an intermediate step. And, of course, like all films about Sudan must be, it’s a call to action.

Most importantly, the film recognizes the pitfalls of the relocation project, and presents them with impressive clarity, even though the three characters it follows — John, Daniel and Panther — fortunately do not succumb to all of them. We go to a Lost Boys of Sudan reunion party and see that a sizable group of them have become generic thugs, spending their cash on jewelry and mid-priced Chrysler sedans. Quinn has nothing but derision for this, and compares them to his protagonists, who mostly keep their eyes on the prize, determined to use their opportunity to help the people they left behind in Africa; John soon goes into politics, Panther schemes to return and find his girlfriend; Daniel, less ambitious, contents himself for now with helping a lady who inexplicably breaks into tears at the supermarket where he works. But none of them see new blue-collar lives as their future. They lament their loneliness, commenting that “people aren’t friendly here”; the movie doesn’t shy away from the fact that though they are no longer in danger of starving, the Lost Boys’ lives here are sometimes — perhaps even by and large — bleak and lonely. In that respect, it provides some vital perspective.

I’m not sure God Grew Tired of Us is a great documentary. Moments seem dishonest — there are some portentous shots of suspicious white people glaring, presumably at the cabal of black men who’ve entered a place of public accommodation, but this seems unfair, since they could just as easily have been staring at the camera crew that accompanied them. (In fairness, the film does detail an incident when proprietors, feeling threatened, called the police, who proceeded to pow-wow with the Lost Boys and instruct them not to travel in large groups.) Nicole Kidman’s narration veers in and out of the film, vital in the expository (and brutal, and heartbreaking) opening scenes and seeming more like filler later, when the movie begins to rely on the personalities of its subjects to get us through. And though skillful in many ways, the doc never quite develops a stylistic identity or an overarching feel.

The importance of the material and Quinn’s approach to it allow God Grew Tired of Us to transcend its pedestrian cinematic virtues. Though a message movie at heart, it doesn’t preach or condescend, letting its message emerge from an interpersonal rather than a political context (“When someone is in pain, the best way is to involve in their problem,” says Daniel) and hoping we take the hint. Moving everyone to Buffalo and Pittsburgh won’t be the answer, but America could still play a part in whatever is.

-- Eugene Novikov

Released:	2007
Starring:	Nicole Kidman (narrator)
Directed by:	Christopher Quinn
Rated:	PG