Lets face it guys, Africa is officially the fucked continent. While lots of people are doing all they can Africa is filled with civil wars, poverty, and famines. These problems are mainly due to foreign involvement but they continue due to bad governments which are kind of the same thing.
Foreign aid has worked well in recent years providing lots of food for starving people which is kind of Africa's signature characteristic right now. Things weren't always this good for Africa though. In the beginning of the African aid movement a lot of the "aid" was pretty bad and screwed over Africans more then it helped them.
The myriad of different aid programs are to numerous for me to mention them all in detail but there is one problem that posses a threat to the whole world. The ruination of Lake Victoria.
Lake Victoria
As far as I understand it Lake Victoria is one of the largest lakes in the world and is located somewhere in Tanzania. The film is mostly filled with a type of fish called a cichlid which are are part of the same genus but has many different species that occupy many different ecological roles.
The thing is that the cichlid's aren't very good at feeding the local African population since they're small and bony. So some genius got the good idea to introduce a much more edible fish. They chose the Nile Perch. It's a six foot long fish that weighs a lot so you can image it to be a very competent fish to... fish. The problem is that the Nile Perch is a carnivore and considering that the native fish population is not bigger then a few inches it is likely that the Nile Perch will simply eat every damn thing in the lake that isn't a bathing human or a crocodile. The official defense to this from those who put the Perch in the lake is that the fish will undergo a major evolutionary adaptive radiation (science talk for an organism that undergoes a massive radiation of forms due to a new situation in it's environment) and become capable of living alongside their larger relatives.
What happened? The Nile Perch ate most of the cichlid species and reduced the surviving species to a limited number. Consider this dear reader, some of the cichlid's have adapted to eat the algae and waste from other organisms so they kind of maintain the integrity of the lake so to speak. Most of these fish that kept the lake clean were eaten.
True the fish produced a large amount of industry but the lake is becoming much weaker in it's oxygen which means that the fish won't be able to breath. This of course means that the fish will die and produce more nitrogen as they die which means more algae. The algae will in turn produce a large amount of pollution and the people can't exactly eat algae can they.
Well that's your little info and African aid for the day, I'll see you next time.
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OH SHIT THE REVIEW!!!
Um, well yeah, Darwin's Nightmare.
Darwin's Nightmare is an extremely thought provoking experience. Not only does this film touch on the issues that I have mentioned above but it also raises many new and scary issues along with the things I mentioned above. Buwahhhhahhahahahahahhahaha.
Darwin's Nightmare (DWN from now on)is in actuality a poorly scripted mess made by a moron who doesn't even talk about the Nile Perch at all. Seriously for the first part of the movie I kept waiting for some kind of introduction that would enlighten me on the whole Lake Victoria issue.
I think the fish is fully grown in this image
Instead I sat on my ass while I watched the camera go around an interview a random bunch of people who are loosely involved with the whole Nile Perch thing. I can't describe how terrible I felt during the beginning of this "documentary". I felt like I had been seriously been ripped off, I mean this documentary promised something about how the people of Lake Victoria and the Lake itself were being negatively affected by the Nile Perch. Instead what I got was a bizarre sequence of events where I got to meet a couple of interesting including a hooker who dated cargo plane pilots, the cargo plane pilots themselves, a guard who uses a bow and happens to guard the institute for fish studies (not the real name btw) as well as a few random fishermen who have a lot of dead buddies.
Yeah I have no fucking idea what the above has to do with the Nile Perch. The only relation is that they show a few pictures of the caught fish and they show the cargo planes which carry the fish to Europe/America.
This is further confounded by the lack of a narrator or any narration or back story what so ever. What happens instead is that the documentary goes around with the camera man and sometimes an interviewer, I think, and talks to a lot of people. That it. Some may find this to be a neat and innovative technique but I find it to be lazy and hamfisted attempt at being "deep". What were the makers of this film going for when they made it? Did they think we would find the lives of hooker conveniently living near Lake Victoria interesting? The story of the hooker is pretty sad but what the hell does it have to do with the Nile Perch? That is the main problem with DWN, it really does not involve the Nile Perch whatsoever. This is kind of a major deal considering the NIle Perch are causing a major evolutionary disaster and considering that this film is called Darwin's Nightmare you would tend to think that this involves evolution in some way.
Okay I lied, somewhat. The film does involve the Nile Perch in some way. Basically it says (use the term say, very loosely) that the cargo planes which carry the Nile Perch are taking the food away while most of Tanzania starves. Seems kind of an odd point to argue since the Europeans eating the fish probably include quite a few inconvenienced people themselves. But hey the Africans are worse off.
That's kind of my issue with the movie. It includes a lot of "interesting" scenes where we see the poor children/people of Tanzania engage in a number of activities that involve drug abuse and food stealing, it's mostly children that do this. The documentary shows like two scenes of mature adults engaging in jobs that would make most of us shy away from to put it mildly.
How is this a problem? Well it doesn't bring anything new to the table. WE HAVE KNOWN THAT AFRICA HAS A LOT SHITTY PLACES TO LIVE AND THAT STARVATION OCCURS NUMEROUSLY AND THAT MOST JOBS SUCK. DWN just shows us the same damn thing we have always known, sure the details are new but they aren't much to take home.
In fact I would be bothered by this documentary if I were Tanzanian. Sure I would acknowledge that the stuff this documentary shows if true but the way the documentary puts it is like Tanzania is filled with starving children snorting.... urine. I am pretty much dead serious hear. I doubt all places are like this and I would think that their are a lot of programs in Tanzania made to counteract this issue.
Some of the stuff they show is just plain pointless. Do we really need to hear about the guy who died because a croc bit of hit leg? Or the fact that the hooker was killed by a client? Sad sure. Interresting? No.
Funnily enough someone actually published a book called the Other Side of Darwin's Nightmare which is apparently a critical review of the film and considering the film misses so much about the Nile Perch it must be quiet lengthy. Don't believe me? Here's a pic.
Sue me I couldn't find a picture of the book.
In conclusion Darwin's Nightmare is really, really bad. It's none that retarded kind of bad where it's funny if terrible. This the kind of bad that kills small animals on exposure. I suggest that you get surprised sexed instead of watching this movie.
Verdict: Avoid it
