Guerrilla Girl (2005) Reviews

• More Girl than Guerrilla

  marobertson2006-02-28

  Young men and women the world over enter military service for a variety of reasons, from economic opportunity to patriotism to the simple desire to fight. The journey of young recruits from raw human material to part of an effective fighting force in nations like the Untied States has been covered ad nauseum, and such films have even been encouraged by the government (assuming they have final say). But what if you wanted to follow the journey of say a young person joining up with the Maoist rebels in the mountains of Nepal or the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka? There we are talking about a much more arduous and less traveled road. This is exactly the sort of path Frank Piasechi Poulsen has taken in Guerrilla Girl. By some amazing combination of tenacity and luck, he has managed to get inside of rebel training camp in South America. Isabel is an educated young woman from a family of means in Colombia who has decided to leave behind everything she knows and journey into the heavily forested mountains of her country to join the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Her commitment is a profound one, as membership in FARC is for life. Such a documentary could easily become a polemic, but Poulsen has eschewed such an approach focusing instead on the very personal trials, thoughts, and beliefs of Isabel and those around her. This film is shot up-close and personal from a perspective that allows you to feel as though you were sitting in a jungle camp just across from this intriguing young woman. We see her in political education classes, practicing soldiering with a wooden rifle, and having a spat with another recruit over soap; all portrayed with a surprising intimacy. Guerrilla Girl has some of the best cinematography I've seen in a documentary, made all the more incredible when one considers the setting it's achieved in. If you're looking for an explanation of the decades-long conflict in Colombia, I can suggest many excellent books on the subject. Any film attempting to explain this struggle in ninety minutes would be doomed to failure, and not worth your time. But if you'd like a very human portrait of someone you're not likely to ever know otherwise, in a place you'll probably never be, then I highly recommend Guerrilla Girl.

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• Nothing is ever as it seems -- or as portrayed.

  RJBurke19422007-03-22

  This documentary is significant for a number of reasons. First, on a personal level, it brought back strong memories for me of the rain forests of New Guinea, where I spent six years in colonial administration in the 1960s. The cinematography is excellent; the sounds of the jungle are vibrant, even the drumming rain on the canvas. Second, as a political documentary about FARC, it comes across more as a 'come on' video for other prospective and starry-eyed recruits to the cause. That's not the ideal function of true documentary practice. If you're gonna make a recruiting video, don't dress it up as fact, because this film is staged, from the first frame to the last (a montage of real battles of FARC guerrillas at war with paramilitaries). On that basis, however, it's no better and no worse, than any other video for, say, the US Army, the Tamil Tigers, ETA or any other military force. Third, from a moral and philosophical point of view, the film is totally bankrupt, if not incoherent. Nowhere in the narrative is there any mention of what the future holds, in concrete terms, for the people of Colombia when FARC finally wins the war. Well, that begs the question, right? Will FARC ever win this grinding conflict that's gone on for decades? Who's to say, who's to know? Never mind, just carry on the fight, okay, and don't ask questions...just carry out the orders. Aaaah, but that sort of line is currently – in this decisive year 2007 -- being delivered to the surging grunts in Baghdad, no? I'm not against political, social and economic justice; quite to the contrary. However, it's never going to be achieved by an unending civil war; to continue in that direction means that the country is ultimately destroyed in order to save it. And that's like smoking forty cigarettes every day while you're dying of terminal lung cancer... And a film such as this, that actively promotes the continuation of civil hostilities within the country is to be deplored, regardless of the sincerity, comradeship and even love displayed by the recruits. By all means see this film. The Colombian paramilitary forces and the CIA have probably seen it also. So, you may as well. Why not?

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• A well made documentary

  tr03152005-11-20

  I liked this film. It felt "true" to me. I like it when documentaries just document. Often in documentaries it feels as if the creators are determined about how the film is going to be and what the conclusions are going to be, before they start making it (obvious example is Michael Moore). In this film it felt like the creators just thought "Let us see what life is like for a girl entering the FARC" without having a specific idea of what it is like. And then they just show what they see. This is what we saw, no more, no less. Apart from that, I really enjoyed the form. No voice overs. Fly-on-the-wall camera. Down tempo moments with beautiful visual pictures. Why not 10? I don't know, it just lacks the final touch, it didn't give me goosebumps :)

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• This movie is part of the Colombian reality... it is true!

  monomotor2006-12-09

  What you said could be true, but I'd add to your comment that everything you said is the same for the official government; they did us all you said that guerrilla did you. They are criminals too... official criminals. So, this movie is another part of the Colombian reality and it shows what people in the cities, like you, do not see or do not want to see. Colombia is not just Medellin, Bogota or Cali... Colombia is also country, jungle, suburbs and rural zones, where poor people live all their lives hiding from, not just poverty, but government crimes. Many people do not want to realize that ELN and FARC are fighting because there is poverty and no solution,and we hope, without being guerrilla people, they could change that awful system some day.

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• Good photography, but a wasted opportunity

  gbscar2006-01-10

  The movie's fairly impressive photography is probably its strongest point, along with the novelty of its being a movie about the FARC. As far as those aspects go, the film would deserve a 9 or a 10. Other than that, the rating quickly drops when the content itself is analyzed. For those that actually know more about Colombia than the average European left-winger (or right-winger, for that matter), it is sorely lacking. The film doesn't ask any tough questions, it simply passively accepts and reproduces exactly what the protagonist and the guerrillas want their audience (ie: non-Colombian foreigners) to see and hear, and nothing more. The film feels flat and lacking in context. For the most part, it just shows a girl joining the FARC, receiving training, interacting with other FARC members, having a conversation or two with her family by phone, and finally becoming "combat ready". That's it. There is no tension, no serious debate about the issues, no sense of moral ambiguity, no real action, nothing else. It's all too simple. The message that the movie wants to transmit, and which according to interviews on the web was already clear to the authors long before the film was made, is that "FARC guerrillas are also human beings". Of course, nobody doubts that the FARC is made up of human beings. Hey, even the paramilitaries are also human beings, just as Al Qaeda and the CIA are human too. That, however, does not excuse the actions of any of them. A documentary that aims no higher than that is not one that can survive repeated viewings. Even the imperfect "La Sierra", another documentary on Colombia and which deals with urban gangs linked to the paramilitaries, is a much better example of how to address some of the complexity of Colombia's current conflict, without falling into intellectual and moral passivity. Sadly, "Guerrilla Girl" pales in comparison.

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