ScaredSacred

In the world today documentaries are hot. Michael Moore and others have exposed moviegoers to society's and government's frightening mores. Although I applaud these filmmakers, most of their films have only added to my personal confusion and dismay at the world I find myself living in. Velcro Ripper's thought provoking film, SacreSacred, has done just the opposite. By exploring the stories of individuals who have dealt with some of the modern world's deepest tragedies Ripper has offered much more than your average political documentary. A path through life during these difficult times feels clarified by this brilliant, yet simple film. If you're sent reeling by the evening news and are looking for a film that offers hope, despite tragedy, I highly recommend this film.

My overall feeling about this film is that it was a slow, drawn-out, structureless wander through some of the worlds genuinely unfortunate situations with a bit of redemption and an obvious message. The film is composed mostly of fairly uninteresting video footage of the countries he visits with bad reenactments, all slow-mo'ed down to a snails pace and overlaid with depressing music. Certainly some of the materials and interviews contain some compelling stories, but unlike what the description on the back suggests, it wasn't so much the victim's story that's being told as it is the director's, Mr. Ripper, and he doesn't tell it well. This film could have included longer, better interviews with the people themselves, letting them tell their stories. Instead Mr. Ripper indulgently draws the story towards himself making it some kind of personal journey, and unfortunately it doesn't end up being much of one. I never really got a sense of any growth as he explores the subject, and he never indicates what about the subject pulled him in in the first place. He just drags us from one place to the next, brushes lightly on the situation and characters, hangs around showing too much uneventful slow-motion footage of people just walking around the streets, then moves on to his next destination. He does this over, and over, and over again without any real development. I felt like this film could have been cut down to 45 minutes but it's drawn out to close to 2 crushingly slow hours. We feel morally obliged to care about the topic, but the director's self-indulgent, meandering, uninspired delivery of his journey makes you grow numb after a while.

You gotta see this one!

I saw it at opening night at The Carlton in Toronto. Mr. Ripper has a gentle, no B.S. way of exposing the truth, or at least his truth, about this troubled world of ours. The film is not AIMED AT any wrong-doers, it simply shows the situation, and asks us to open our hearts. His focus is on the positive, the hope, rather than on the bad guy; on what we can do right versus what they have done wrong. I prefer this to a Farenheit 9/11, where Moore, though extremely witty and brave, sometimes discards objectivity in his pursuit of a Gee Dubbya, or whoever happens to be his enemy of choice, and therefore misses the beauty of the human spirit in the face of all the world's 'ground zero' disasters.

Ripper should be thanked for telling his story, as should the many incredibly brave souls in the film who tell THEIR story.

Technically, I thought the cinematography, editing, and sound design, including the music, were highly creative.

Directed by Vancouver documentarian Velcrow Ripper, ScaredSacred looks at how people who have experienced brutal disasters during their life have been able to maintain their humanity and devote themselves to working for social change. Scared Sacred, which was voted into the Toronto International Film Group's Canada's Top Ten list in 2004, takes the viewer on a personal journey to visit some of the most troubling spots on the planet and shows that the only meaningful response to hatred is compassion. Ripper, who is also the film's narrator, explores the possibility of transforming the "scared" into the "sacred" by "breathing in" the pain and "breathing out" compassion.

Ripper visits the site of a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India where a gas leak (deliberately caused or not) killed 8000 people in 1984; the killing fields of Cambodia, where reminders of Khmer Rouge atrocities are everywhere; Sarajevo, where anger still haunts the survivors of the Balkan civil war. Included are visits to Hiroshima, refugee camps in Pakistan, women's schools in Afghanistan, and Israel and Palestine where survivors mourn the loss of their loved ones. Reminiscent of the documentary Promises, Ripper finds that when Israelis and Palestinians realize their common humanity, they can no longer be enemies as they tell him that "we paid the highest price possible" so "if we can talk, anyone can."

The director reveals that part way through his journey that he had "become a tourist of darkness," and that he "was filling my pockets with images while leaving my heart untouched." He pauses long enough to reflect on this in a Buddhist monastery and discovers that meditation brought him closer to the pain rather than shielding him from its reality. One of the most moving sequences is at ground zero in New York City after 9/11 where Ripper shows us a Zen teacher who says the reason tourists come to look at the ruins is not to simply stare but to "connect with their vulnerability."

Another affecting sequence is in Cambodia where Aki Ra tells how he was forced by the Khmer Rouge to lay land mines in the jungles and how his entire family was murdered without reason. Aki Ra today spends his life uncovering and disarming from 15 to 100 of the land mines each day. In Sarajevo, he interviews artists that lived on the infamous Sniper's Alley during the war and who used their art to transform the "negative energy of the war into a positive vibration of the human soul". In India, he listens as the Dalai Lama tells his followers that "the concept of war is based on the concept of 'we' and 'they'" and that the first disarmament must be internal.

Over and over, Ripper meets people to whom pain is not a trigger for revenge but an opening for spiritual advancement. A Rabbi even dares to articulate that there is a larger context for our pain even though hidden to our conscious mind. Although ScaredSacred does not probe how these events might have been prevented or who is responsible, it does provide a deeply moving response to those who despair for humanity's future. Ripper himself concludes the film with the statement that brings home the underlying theme in the film: "dread allows me to see each face as my own."

I thought this film was great, it got me thinking, and I've encouraged everyone I know to go and see it. However, I wish the filmmaker could have figured out whether he was telling his OWN story, or telling the story of his interview subjects. Either one is fascinating, but the tension/indecision was a bit frustrating while I was viewing the film.

I was most impressed with the VARIETIES of "sacredness" he discovered. There was a nice variation in the interpretations of what could be considered "sacred". I liked how he let the interview subjects speak for themselves. Not too much narration. However, this relative lack of narration did leave the viewer hanging at times. I wanted to know more about the filmmaker's personal experience.

Now I'm going to get all critical. I thought the film was a bit random. I sort of wished that he would have made it clearer when he was changing locations. A more structured approach might have been more effective. I also would have appreciated a bit of more of a synopsis of the "scary event" that happened in each location. Especially in the case of Bosnia, this would have been useful (I know I'm making myself look ignorant here). I found that the whole 9/11 issue got a lot more screen time than other locations. This annoyed me a bit, but I do understand why he did it: it's recent and it affected us all.

At times this film became about "religious responses to suffering" and things got a bit fuzzy. When you start talking about religious traditions it's hard to know where to "meet" your audience. It isn't safe to assume that the audience has knowledge of Buddhist or Hindu responses to suffering. However, it wouldn't be advisable to take up too much screen time with generalizations about religious doctrines.

Then the narrator alluded to his time with the Buddhists in the monasteries and his time with the Sufis. Footage of whirling dervishes seemed to be included for aesthetic value, which was a bit frustrating. Since the film was about responses to suffering and he said that he ended up spending time with Buddhists and Sufis, I was incredibly curious about WHY he spent time with these two groups and WHAT he got out of it! Did facing all this suffering make him more receptive to these traditions? What were their responses to his situation, or to "our" situation? I enjoyed this film. I'm glad it was made. I think the subject matter is relevant and compelling. There are scary things happening in the world and we're all coming to terms with them in our own ways. This film is a record of one man's journey. It was personal, but not too sappy. It didn't try to provide answers or easy happy endings, and that's what won me over.