07032
January 16, 2007

Film takes a fresh look at Sudan’s ‘Lost Boys’

by Stephen Whitty
Religion News Service

NEWARK, NJ — They are called the “Lost Boys,” and like Peter Pan’s crew, it has been years since they last saw their homes or families. But while Peter’s cohorts lived in perpetual childhood, these children have been stripped of theirs. While Peter’s friends played at pirates and Indians, these are trying only to live.
   
     They are a true lost generation, born into civil war in Sudan and forced to flee for their lives when Muslim militias — with a savagery to rival Hitler’s, or Herod’s — ordered all non-Muslim boys killed or castrated. It was genocide on a massive scale. It still is.
   
     Thousands of boys, though, survived and, as a new documentary, “God Grew Tired of Us” details, did so by going on a trek of almost biblical proportions, first to Ethiopia then — when that country turned on them — on to Kenya. The oldest boys took charge of the youngest. The still-living buried the just-dead. Their exile lasted more than a decade.
   
     Various church groups and government agencies provided the boys with food and rudimentary schooling and finally, a lottery ticket out — a trip to America, temporary housing and, eventually, citizenship and refuge. Even as some lucky ones seized this new chance, they cried for the ones left behind.
   
     This is a powerful story but it is also one told before, in 2004’s “Lost Boys of Sudan.” “God Grew Tired of Us” follows the same outline.
   
     We see the “boys” — some now grown men — in the refugee camps. We watch their first few months in America, as they try to acclimate themselves to a new culture while holding on to their own. We wonder which ones will make it, which will not.
   
     “God Grew Tired of Us” doesn’t add much to this twice-told story, besides some Hollywood power (Brad Pitt is among the film’s producers; Nicole Kidman narrates). Still, just a few months after the cruelties of “Borat,” it’s instructive to see again how truly foreign America is to much of the world.
   
     The boys speak good English (although the film is still subtitled) and there’s wisdom in their simple questions (one, a quietly sincere Christian, wonders what Santa Claus has to do with the birth of Jesus). Still, they have to be taught how to turn on a light, use a shower, flush a toilet. Weeks after they’ve arrived, one boy still soaps himself with shaving cream; another makes breakfast by mashing together Ritz crackers and milk in a coffee pot.
   
     It’s easy to smile, perhaps, but the joke may be on us. It’s sweet charity to want to do something for these young men, but to think the answer is resettling them in Syracuse or Pittsburgh reeks of arrogance. Sure, they are grateful for the help, and willing to work hard (several hold down two and three jobs). But they don’t want the American dream. They want a Sudanese one. They want their country back.
   
     Perhaps one day they will have it. For now, though, they must live with a foot in each world, traveling back to their homeland whenever it seems safe, bringing their few scattered surviving relatives here whenever it seems possible. Yes, America is, in some ways, their promised land. But the promise they cling to most stubbornly is a child’s warm image of home.
   
     Rated PG, the film contains some vulgar language and disturbing imagery. It runs 83 minutes.