BENDING THE ARC

Featuring: Dr. Paul Farmer, Jim Yong Kim, Ophelia Dahl, Dr. Agnes Binagwaho, Dr. Joia Mukherjee, St. Ker Francois, Adeline Mercon, Meliquiades Huauya Ore.
Screenwriter: Cori Shepherd Stern
Directors: Kief Davidson and Pedro Kos.

Reviewed January 23 at the Jetty Memorial Theatre, Coffs Harbour as part of the 2018 Screenwave International Film Festival.

Rating: 4.5/5

A 30-year campaign to provide poor nations with the means by which to save their populations from fatal contagions makes for an enriching, enraging and deeply emotional profile in Bending the Arc. Deriving its metaphoric title from the words of abolitionist and great reformer Theodore Parker (“I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one…from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice”), the directing team of Kief Davidson and Pedro Kos have crafted a story of social heroism, fierce spiritual triumph and driven scientific determination.

The core of the documentary is the friendship that bonds Dr Paul Farmer, Ophelia Dahl (daughter of Raold) and Dr Jim Yong Kim. In the early 1980s, idealistic twenty-somethings Farmer and Dahl found themselves in Haiti, surrounded by dire poverty and a population still stricken with the archaic but deadly scourge of tuberculosis. The pair set out to alter the sad destiny of a small group of Haitians and, with Dr Kim joining their crusade, established a medical centre that drew 100,000s of frail villagers, some perilously close to death.

The movement grew into Partners in Health, a not-for-profit medical research charity whose aim is to establish educational facilities and hospital grade infrastructure in the poorest of regions. Secondary to this aim but no less rousing on-screen drama is the stoushes that the trio and their dedicated volunteers pick with Big Pharma and the rich healthcare systems of Western society, the dark overlords of which refuse to consider the health of poor populations worthy of consideration, let alone investment.

The directing duo’s lightness of touch creates a compelling narrative momentum (kudos to writer Cori Shepherd Stern’s solid structure) while clearly detailing the mountains the movement needed to climb to make real their goals. Utilising interstitial time-and-place cards, Bending the Arc charts initiatives that have combatted drug-resistant tuberculosis in Peru, the AIDS plague in Africa, the aftermath of the Rwandan civil war and the terror of the early days of the Sierra Leone Ebola outbreak. In addition to these grand scale undertakings, Davidson and Kos evoke the deeply emotional journey of all involved by tracking the route to recovery of patients who we meet at death’s door (the plight of MDR-TB sufferer Meliquiades and his reuniting with Dr Kim reduced your critic to heavy man-sobs).

Given the current administration’s callously racist disregard for the so-called ‘sh*thole countries’ that feature in Bending the Arc, the documentary takes on a volatile humanism-vs. -corporatism urgency that would most likely not have been on the filmmaker’s minds when the film wrapped just ahead of its premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival; it never preaches or takes a political stance, yet reveals the bastardry, greed and short-sightedness of the western medical-industrial establishment.

In the last half-century, the dedication and drive to make better the lives of those with whom we share this global community has never been more desperately needed; the epic struggles and grand achievements of the Partners in Health teams has remained truly heroic (none more so than the community health officials, charged with day-to-day administration in some of the most poverty- and illness-stricken corners of the planet). Bending the Arc, through its core ‘All Humans are Humans’ mantra, celebrates the soaring, empathic personalities that will continue to rebuild international society over the next half-century.

Donations to PARTNERS IN HEALTH can made via the organisation's official website.