In Cité Soleil, a region of Haiti’s
Port-Au-Prince, scrawny, filthy toddlers run naked in the trash-covered
streets. The town resembles an enormous, nightmarish labyrinth, with
grim, narrow stone corridors winding endlessly past citizens dazed by
the strife of a merciless struggle for survival.
Danish director Asger Leth’s Ghosts of Cité Soleil captures this traumatized locale with astounding, 16mm
vibrancy. At the time of the film’s creation, Haiti’s president was the
corrupt Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who hired local gangs to assist his
police force in staving off the advances of violent political rebels.
Somehow, Leth’s camera team forged intimate relationships with two of
the most notorious of these gangsters, a pair of brothers named Bily
and 2Pac. We see these wildly dangerous men arguing with their
“soldiers,” sleeping with lovers in their homes, and even
showering.
Heavily influenced by American rap (as evidenced by 2Pac’s name) the
brothers exhibit a crushing vulnerability beneath their macho swagger.
When behind closed doors, 2Pac expresses fear of dying and a confused
ambivalence toward his brother, whom he both loves and distrusts. Both
men fall in love with a white, French relief worker named Lele. She
chooses one and denies the other, in a real-life narrative twist
befitting a soap opera.
Leth has been lambasted by some critics for glamorizing Cité
Soleil’s violence with snappy, music video-style editing and a hiphop
soundtrack. But the music is an impassioned original score by Wyclef
Jean, himself a Haitian native, and the editing sorts the footage into
intimate character studies. Leth could have depicted the horrors of
Cité Soleil from afar; instead, he chose, at the risk of his own
life, to zoom in. He has not glamorized the lifestyles on display in
Cité Soleil, he has humanized them.