by STEFAN STEINBERG
This is the second in a series of articles on the recent Berlin International Film Festival, February 11-21. Part one was posted on 24 February.
One of the most engrossing films at the Berlinale was the new film by Raoul Peck. After treating developments in a number of African countries in his more recent films—Lumumba (2000) and Sometimes in April (2004), dealing with the massacre in Ruanda—Peck has turned his attention to his native Haiti.
The premiere of his film in Haiti itself was cancelled following the devastating earthquake in mid-January. Virtually the entire action in Moloch Tropical takes place within a fortress residence located high on a mountain. The opening shot is of the president of the land rising from his silk-sheeted bed and performing his morning ablutions. He appears nervous and strangely absent. In the course of getting up, he upsets a glass bottle on his bedside table and it falls to the floor and shatters.
Following his shower, the inevitable happens: the distracted president steps with his bare foot on a shard of glass. For the remainder of the film, he must conduct his affairs of state with a bandage on his foot and limping heavily.
In the first scene, we learn that the all-powerful president surrounded by his entourage of lackeys, officials and bodyguards is just as prone to mishaps as any other mortal. Peck keeps his camera on the figure of the president over the course of the next 24 hours, during which a popular uprising takes place and which ends with the president ousted from his post following the intervention of the US ambassador.
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