Hubert Sauper’s documentary is jagged and not well put together, but startling in its moments of unexpected beauty and painful insight. A bucket of fish dropped into immense Lake Victoria sometime in the ’60s has become an ecological and economic disaster. The voracious Nile Perch has devoured 200 other species of fish and now cannibalizes its own young, creating a monoculture exploited by neo-colonialist powers. The big transport planes fly in empty -- unless they are bringing in weapons from merchants of death to fuel African civil wars -- and fly out to Russia and the EU filled with tons of processed fish. The local Tanzanians are left with fish-heads to process into a vile soup, and plastic containers the kids can burn and huff like glue. There is no longer the basis for a local economy, except working for the man plantation-style or selling your body to pilots or other outsiders with money. Meanwhile international officials go on tv to extoll the economic development betokened by the booming fish industry. The film is doubly hard to watch, because the harsh reality is so grim and stark, but also because its structure is haphazard and elliptical. Important but not great filmmaking. (2005, Sund/T, n.) *7-* (MC-84.) (This is a good point to observe that the Metacritic rating system is far from scientific, since they assign the numerical ratings to reviews that are then averaged, and it’s clear those numbers are influenced by the unknown tabulator’s own appreciation of the film. A New Yorker review, e.g., might read like a 100 rating to you, but only an 80 to me, since my initial enthusiasm does not match yours. But still, subjectivity compounded achieves at least some objectivity, a la The Wisdom of Crowds, and places my own rating in a context of critical consensus.)
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