movie reviews
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
The Devil appears in many forms, and in the West African nation of Liberia, the Devil is Charles Taylor.
Liberia’s roots began somewhat idealistically, a dream for freed American slaves who returned to 19th Century Africa. In 1847, Liberia became an independent nation, and over a century later, the country fell into complete civil and political collapse. The eruption of two civil wars in the 1980s and the 1996 “election” of warlord Charles Taylor as president (one of his campaign slogans: “He killed my Ma, he killed my Pa, but I will vote for him”), should have left the people of Liberia hopeless. But the women of Liberia prove that hope is not lost, as a group of Muslim and Christian women decided to take a stand against Liberia’s tumultuous present. Pray the Devil Back to Hell unleashes their story on the world.
The riveting documentary follows Leymah Gbowee, a Liberian peace activist as she recounts her 2002 mobilization of ordinary Liberian women against the brutal Democratic farce of Charles Taylor. In response to the merciless rapes and crimes perpetrated by the warlords, Gbowee brought together a vigil of Christian women to decry Taylor’s tactics of terror and destabilization. When Taylor agreed to enter peace talks with the warring rebel groups, Gbowee and her group joined with a Muslim women’s association to protest outside the compound where the Liberian leaders met. When the negations seemed to go on forever, Gbowee and her strong group of women took action into their own hands, performing a momentous and unforgettable act of civil disobedience.
Director Gini Reticker forges this exhaustively researched documentary from nearly unbelievable footage of Liberia alongside interviews with the women who organized against Taylor. Gbowee’s lucid narrative ties together the nearly flawless story, juxtaposing images of child-soldiers and sprawling urban warfare on the streets of Monrovia. This footage of Liberia fills in the nebulous territory demarcated by the news media across the world. The images of children with machine guns, stalking the streets for enemies, represent the plight of child soldiers and corrupt regimes across the world. This is the “war torn region,” the warring place outside our reality from which we construct our own concept of peace. It is seemingly home to the Other, the people that are not “us.” Liberia is certainly one of the worst, but countless others exist, to the complacency of many “Western” cultures. But when these regions are explored by documentaries like Pray the Devil Back to Hell, change happens. Never again is Africa just a forgotten headline, it is a real place where people like Gbowee enact real change through a passionate thirst for justice.
For a film about such heavy subject matter, Pray the Devil Back to Hell never relies on the shock value of body counts or corpses (although the unceasing warfare claimed nearly 200,000 lives). Instead, Gbowee’s captivating narrative, filled with her hope and dream of a better Liberia, infuses the documentary with an uplifting spirit. Gbowee is a testament that in even in the harshest environments, the voices of the voiceless can be heard. The Devil doesn’t always win.
—Drew Tewksbury
12.03.08
Artist Direct
Related posts:
Discussion
No comments for “Pray the Devil Back to Hell”
Post a comment