Like so many European (especially German) movies produced in the last few years, this one adopts a minimalistic approach leading the director to tell his story in the flattest and most superficial way possible. Instead of exploring the characters' personalities and the movie's topic - the misguided projects set up by Western institutions to relieve destitute Negro populations - the film lingers forever on the characters' everyday routine, with no powerful situation or strong dialog, scarce references and an extremely diluted story. The outcome is one and a half hour of meaninglessness and boredom.
Behind the intentional refusal of letting anything of interest happen, or explaining anything, there probably rests the idea of encouraging the proactive viewer to form his own judgment. While I like forming independent thoughts, I see no reason why a movie, or any form of artistic expression, should restrain itself to such extremes of tediousness, or communicate with the public with only vague hints and half-formed suggestions set on a background of drabbest quotidianity. Yet, that's probably what the enthralled critics and a snotty, stuck-up public like in this garbage: its very indeterminateness allows them to weave their webs of interpretations with absolute freedom -- to bloviate endlessly with no fear of denial or contradiction.
Which is what art finally stands for: an everlasting flood of words.
The only remarkable thing in this half-baked mush is the well-drawn comparison between the efficient, morally-conscious European way of life and the drowsy, slothful African attitude -- perfectly mirrored in the change occurring to the main character between the first and the second part of the movie. However, the director's decision of choosing a Negro actor in the role of the doctor who travels to Africa to evaluate the local situation shrinks the comparison to the level of mere cultural relations and is rooted in anti-Racist bigotry.
In the end, 'Sleeping sickness' is quite artsy and fashionable, and for these very reasons it is a terrible, truly uninteresting movie.
Behind the intentional refusal of letting anything of interest happen, or explaining anything, there probably rests the idea of encouraging the proactive viewer to form his own judgment. While I like forming independent thoughts, I see no reason why a movie, or any form of artistic expression, should restrain itself to such extremes of tediousness, or communicate with the public with only vague hints and half-formed suggestions set on a background of drabbest quotidianity. Yet, that's probably what the enthralled critics and a snotty, stuck-up public like in this garbage: its very indeterminateness allows them to weave their webs of interpretations with absolute freedom -- to bloviate endlessly with no fear of denial or contradiction.
Which is what art finally stands for: an everlasting flood of words.
The only remarkable thing in this half-baked mush is the well-drawn comparison between the efficient, morally-conscious European way of life and the drowsy, slothful African attitude -- perfectly mirrored in the change occurring to the main character between the first and the second part of the movie. However, the director's decision of choosing a Negro actor in the role of the doctor who travels to Africa to evaluate the local situation shrinks the comparison to the level of mere cultural relations and is rooted in anti-Racist bigotry.
In the end, 'Sleeping sickness' is quite artsy and fashionable, and for these very reasons it is a terrible, truly uninteresting movie.