indifference

Each time I ask someone if they have already seen the movie “Lord of War,” the answer I usually get is a shake of the head. I saw it in Manila – where movies are way ahead than Dumaguete can ever hope to be; think “Harry Potter!” – with my father on one of our “dates.”

When the credits finally rolled, we were both in awe.

As Roger Ebert wrote in his review, "‘Lord of War’ is a bleak comedy, funny in a Catch-22 sort of way, and at the same time an angry outcry against the gun traffic that turns 12-year-olds into killers and cheapens human life to the point where might makes not only right, but everything else. [The main character] Yuri is played by Nicolas Cage in another of those performances you cannot easily imagine anyone else doing; he plays an immigrant from Ukraine who has the cocky self-assurance, the snaky surface charm, the breezy intellectual justification for the most indefensible acts.”

According to Andrew Niccol (“The Truman Show,” “Gattaca”), writer and director of “Lord of War,” the filmmakers worked with actual gunrunners in the making of the film, and they were more cooperative and efficient than the studio or the crew. Moreover, no U.S. studio would back the film. Foreign finances were secured instead.

From the beginning, Yuri maintains, “There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That's one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is: How do we arm the other 11?” He is extremely good at his job that he later declared, “They say that ‘evil prevails when good men fail to act.’ It should be ‘evil prevails.’”

What I like most about this film is not just the cinematography, the caustic wit, and Cage’s performance, but also the fact that it is about a sizzling modern-day topic. Some reviewers have mentioned that Yuri was too indifferent a man for the film’s message to get across. But then, when people pour out of the cinema, they cannot help but talk about arms-dealing. In my opinion, the film achieves its purpose.

There are killings, abductions and rape by government forces and armed opposition groups remained widespread in armed conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Somalia, Sudan and Uganda. This situation is very much real.

I remember months back when I was asked by the Ferris University Volunteer Center to talk about the Amnesty International 2003 Report to Japanese volunteers. Since the report was in English, I had to summarize what the state of human rights was like in every part of the world. The statistics were alarming.

When Dr. Irene Khan, the secretary-general of Amnesty International, came to the university, I was lucky enough to be one of her two guides. I related to her the fact that when the volunteers found out that in the United Kingdom, for example, two women each week on average were killed by a partner or former partner, or that the African region continued to have the highest regional rate in the world of people living with HIV/AIDS, they were so shocked. Dr. Khan replied that she hoped a lot more people will know.

She reinforces this thought in the Amnesty International website, “…[A] lethal combination of indifference, erosion and impunity … marks the human rights landscape today. Human rights are not only a promise unfulfilled, they are a promise betrayed.”

This brings to mind the tours we gave as Campus Ambassadors to the groups who visited Silliman University during enrollment week. Someone from a group from Bulacan asked if we had any tibaks here; the leftists, activists that are proliferating in the metropolis right now. I told him that some people might compare and say that while students from the University of the Philippines are known for being extremely active, Sillimanians are the extremely passive counterpart. He just said, “Aah,” and settled back in his seat.

One of my Mass Communication teachers just recently reemphasized the significance of knowing about what is happening to the rest of the world. She said that we might not get affected by the earthquake in Pakistan or whatnot because we have our own problems. We do have our own problems. But this is not an excuse to disengage ourselves from the rest of the world. We should always be informed, so we can act.

Like the Amnesty International, I also believe in the power of ordinary people to promote hope over fear, action over inaction and solidarity over indifference. I also remain an eternal hope-monger.