So I rented this movie hoping to learn about the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the beginnings of its independence from Belgian rule. I was excited to become familiar with the figures involved in its history, mainly Lumumba and Mobutu. I wanted to see how the new Congolese government attempted to bring together the various groups opposing colonial rule, the political motives behind each one, the reasons behind Belgium's decision to give the DRC its independence, and also how the United States and the former USSR were involved. Sadly, all of my questions went largely unanswered. My belief is that this movie was made by people who, through a passing familiarity with the story of the DRC's fight for freedom, saw a story filled with drama and emotion, and decided to exploit it. They then proceeded to try and stuff all the dramatic points into a storyline, briefly filled them out with dialogue, went to the set and shot it. I could be wrong, but if so it's all the sadder, because then the makers must have simply become too tied up in getting everything in, and ended up glossing over all details in an effort to create an encompassing history. Whatever the reason, the fact is that the movie could be a timeline of sentence-long statements and facts printed on the screen. The film goes through each major occurrence, and tells the viewer point-blank the main idea of what's going on, completely smoothing over the actual details in favor of getting across the big things. For instance, there is the scene when Lumumba is captured by the increasingly rebellious army controlled by Mobutu. In the situation the soldiers have three possible viewpoints: one that sympathizes with Lumumba, one that vilifies Lumumba, and one that stands in the middle, sympathizing and yet obeying orders. Correspondingly, there are three soldiers that speak in the scene, uttering lines that unadornedly show their points of view. Then, to avoid dealing with the actual tensions that these opposing viewpoints bring up, the scriptwriters simply inserted some random shooting, more army guys show up and they just end up beating everyone up. This is the extent of the reflectiveness of the movie. Most of the time, each character simply states their basic motives, the other characters respond with theirs, and that's that. There's little telling through actions; even the things they say are direct the point of painfulness. It's hard to believe that the people represented actually acted like that. Also, in the trend of this directness, things like political tension between factions is reduced to simple acknowledgement of the fact-- we never learn what these factions are, what they're fighting for, their power, basically anything except that they exist. The characters likewise are one-dimensional and flat; unfortunately I don't know whether Lumumba was actually a freedom fighter passionately devoted to ideals of Congolese unity, but after an hour or so of the movie I certainly didn't trust it to tell me so. The DRC, like many developing countries, has a complicated and important history, especially in the period leading up to and after independence. But the telling of these histories will not be useful unless there is recognition of the intricacy of the situations. Lumumba fails to give proper attention to these details, and ends up telling the viewer little except the most general of outlines.
