Avuncular American

Movement on the European Defense Front

This week's Brussels-based "European Voice" has a front page article on French President Sarkozy's proposal to create an intervention force among the EU's six biggest members:

Sarkozy wants to boost European defence during his country’s presidency of the EU in the second half of this year and create what he describes as a “European pillar” within NATO. He is planning to use an offer to reintegrate France fully into NATO command in 2009 to leverage support from European allies for new initiatives on European defence.

The proposal would create a 60,000-strong force, with 10,000 soldiers coming from each of the big 6.  A key part of the plan would be a pledge to spend a minimum of 2% of GDP on defense - something only France and the UK do at present.

Sarkozy comes up with lots of ideas - ask any French citizen, many of whom are asking, "when is going to follow through?" - but this one may have some chance of being pursued during France's EU Presidency, starting this July.  The notion is not new: Europe has had its EUROCORPS - "A Force for Europe and NATO" - for years.  But the size and source of contributing forces - all major members of both NATO and the EU - would be significant.

This proposal, if implemented, would come none too soon to help restore some confidence in the "European Pillar" of NATO.  Recently, the widely respected military affairs analyst Andrew Bacevich wrote in the Los Angeles Times ("NATO At Twilight," February 11, 2008):

Once the Soviet threat disappeared, the European nations making up the core of the alliance wasted no time claiming their peace dividend. They cut defense budgets and shed military capacity. For example, the German army, which had 12 divisions in 1989, today maintains the equivalent of three.  Even as armies shrunk, new missions proliferated.

One of the new missions was to expand. Today, NATO consists of 26 members, with Albania, Croatia and Macedonia lined up to join next. Still more candidates -- Serbia, Montenegro, even Georgia and Ukraine -- are knocking at the door. Adding members provided a mechanism for incorporating what had been Eastern Europe and even parts of the former Soviet Union into Europe proper. But enlargement diluted NATO's actual ability to defend itself. Rather than a collective security organization, the alliance became something more akin to a political club, far more adept at convening conferences than at organizing itself for war.

Bacevich also refers to US Defense Secretary Robert Gates' warning about the dangers of a "two-tier" alliance: "His warning comes too late. The two-tier arrangement already exists, with the great majority of member states content to occupy the lower tier."  As for "political clubs," Europe, the countries of the former Soviet Union, and the United States all share membership in the Vienna-headquartered OSCE (the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which, according to its website, is "the world's largest regional security organization whose 56 participating States span the geographical area from Vancouver to Vladivostok.")  The OSCE should be the primary discussion forum - no need for NATO to duplicate the "talking shop."

Sarkozy's proposal - especially if embraced by Great Britian, France's partner in the ten-year old St. Malo Declaration - could mark the beginning of a reversal of the downward slide.  After the long hiatus of post-Soviet drift, Russia under Putin has flexed its economic muscles, and Europe takes notice each time the gas pipeline nozzles are tightened.  Within NATO, Europe can only assert its interests if backed up by credible military assets.

"L'exception européenne" - In Praise Of Cultural Protectionism

American diplomats are expected to promote American commerce, in all its forms.  I always enjoyed "showing the flag" at openings of American films, and once met a favorite director, Terry Gilliam (of Monty Python fame) at a retrospective featuring his excellent "Twelve Monkeys."  But American insistence on allowing completely free reign to Hollywood - which, last time I checked, had no problem in selling its wares throughout the world - has always bothered my conscience.

Since I'm no longer a serving diplomat (that sounds a bit like "I'm no longer a practicing priest"), I can say what I want.  Which is: I'm all in favor of Europe subsidizing its film industry, and putting money behind projects that would otherwise be lost in the marketplace scramble for dollars.

While not ignoring blockbuster American productions, we find ourselves reveling in Brussels' truly worldwide selection of films.  Some of the independent, non-cineplex theaters here are part of a Europe-and-beyond (it stretches across the Mediterranean) network of cinemas, Europa Cinemas.  Thanks to funding from European Union programs like MEDIA and Eurimages, we get to see lots of films that don't fit the Hollywood star vehicle, shoot 'em up, mode.

Don't get me wrong: not everything American is bad (we jumped at the chance to see the Coen Brothers' latest, "No Country For Old Men"), and not everything French or European is good.  But the "cultural exception" argument is, I believe, the only way to fight a homogenization of cinematic storytelling.  "The Death of French Culture," a Time Magazine piece last year that got the attention of the French press, poked fun at the excesses of French fears of American influence:

France has led the charge for a "cultural exception" that would allow governments to keep out foreign entertainment products while subsidizing their own. French officials, who believe such protectionism is essential for saving cultural diversity from the Hollywood juggernaut, once condemned Steven Spielberg's 1993 Jurassic Park as a "threat to French identity." They succeeded in enshrining the "cultural exception" concept in a 2005 UNESCO agreement, and regularly fight for it in international trade negotiations.

Somehow France has survived Spielberg's dinosaurs and other existential threats, but the sensitivity is perhaps justified.  In recent years, the Bush Administration has been preoccupied with its wars, and what focus there has been on the screen has been to push its "strategic communication" messages of war on terror, etc.  Bush has been no friend to Hollywood, and the feeling is mutual.  But what of a future Democratic administration?

"Hollywood Starry-Eyed For Obama," reads the Variety article on the Senator's successful fund raising efforts.  Barack Obama has sworn off "lobbyist" money for his campaign, but simply keeping a distance from registered lobbyists, though laudable, while continuing to accept money from their industry sponsors won't reassure anyone.  Will Hollywood demand its quid pro quo come next year?  European film patrons, be on your guard.

International Intervention In Africa: Choosing Sides, Choosing Methods

Today's (Tuesday, 12 February) BBC World Service Radio program "Analysis" has an excellent resume of the current state of play in Chad.  Here's the blurb:

What is France doing in Chad? Late last month Chadian rebels began to make their way towards the Chadian capital, Ndjamena. And they came very close to overthrowing the government of President Idriss Deby. But French troops based in Ndjamena played a crucial role in stopping the coup by defending the militarily strategic airport in the city. The question is, why did France do that? And how do French actions fit in with the other players in Chad, notably neighbouring Sudan? Our World Affairs Correspondent Mark Doyle explains.

It's worth clicking for a ten-minute listen.  The BBC interviews several French, African, and British experts on the difficulties facing the European Force (EUFOR) deployment, originally formed with protecting Chad and the Central African Republic from spillover from Sudan's Darfur problems, now risking association with one side in a Chadian civil war.  According to yesterday's VOA:

In a statement released from Gabon, an allied group of rebels said it no longer believed in the neutrality of a force essentially composed of French troops.  They demanded that other European countries refrain from sending their troops to the peacekeeping mission, whose final objective, the rebels say, is to protect the government of long-standing President Idriss Deby.

Deployment of non-African troops in Africa has been problematic.  Great Britain successfully intervened (as part of a UN effort) in Sierra Leone in 2000, but recent attempts to convince Africans of the efficacy of international intervention have faced opposition.  In Sudan's Darfur, the international community is still unable to come up with helicopters for a UN/African Union force.

France is an essential player in Chad and elsewhere in Africa, but carries so much former colonial baggage that the EU may have serious difficulty ever convincing parties to the conflict that it is fielding a neutral force.  It may require tons of patience (and logistical assistance from the international community), but finding African solutions (the AU, of course, but also through successful regional organizations like West Africa's ECOWAS) to Africa's many armed conflicts should be the default posture.  France has stressed training in its RECAMP program, as has the US in ACRI and ACOTA programs.  Anything else runs the risk of association with colonial memories, and can embroil well-meaning (?) non-African organizations in conflicts that are just as complex as those of the Middle East.

Book Reviews

I want to point out a new "Avuncular American" feature: on the right-hand column, just under the list of recent posts, is a new section, "Published Book Reviews."  I haven't yet figured out how to provide readers with Amazon links, so for now it's pure text plus dust cover illustrations.  The reviews are from recent issues of the Foreign Service Journal, the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, and American Diplomacy.  You can detect a trend.

All Energy Is Local

Would that it were so.  But in Europe, anyway, there are tangible signs that local communities can make a contribution to producing their own electricity.  Drive anywhere, and you are likely to see shining white wind turbines on distant hillsides.  This is especially the case in northern European countries, Germany and Denmark in particular.  But the idea is catching on elsewhere.  In France's westernmost region, Brittany, especially here in Finistere, the peninsula jutting into the North Atlantic catches plenty of wind, and communities have started to put their hilltops to work (click on photo below).  Not everywhere, thankfully: there is still a wide swath of the central plateau that is preserved as a regional park, though dotted with villages.

There have had to be accommodations: neighbors complain of TV interference, and sometimes the rotors are stilled at night.  But most of the time the woosh is barely audible, and the "wind farms" (most seem to be in groups of 6 to 8 towers) are sited away from housing.

Here in central Finistere, electricity production started on a local scale.  Old timers remember turbines placed in the locks along the Nantes-Brest Canal, a Napoleonic engineering feat that will soon celebrate its bicentenary.  Though it was long overtaken by the national electrical grid, the turbine down the hill used to supply the farms in the area.  We recently met a Welshman restoring a long-abandoned house near the canal, and he found intact many of the rudimentary fixtures that used to run on hydroelectric power from meters away.

France has long been conscious of the national security aspects of energy independence, and this has translated into its position as Europe's premier producer of nuclear energy.  These same windswept uplands that now are sprouting windmills have also been the home to a now-obsolete heavy water nuclear power plant, in Brennilis.  The reactor has been shut down for more than twenty years, and is slowly - very slowly - being dismantled.  With France's "force de frappe" in hardened submarine bunkers nestled in the rocky Crozon Peninsula nearby, nuclear energy has always been a sensitive subject here in Finistere.  There is no talk of modernizing or maintaining Brennilis (photo source: Wikipedia).

Tom Friedman of the New York Times has spoken eloquently and consistently on the need to become energy independent.  Or at least to reduce the kind of dependence on imported oil that leads to misadventures of the Iraq variety.  Europe is as dependent as the United States on foreign energy sources: every time Vladimir Putin has a spat with Georgia or Ukraine over natural gas, EU leaders hold their breath and hope for a mild winter.

But Europe is light years ahead of the United States in terms of the acceptance of a link between personal behavior and collective responsibility.  Hummers can be seen on European roads, but the poor (rich, actually) idiot who drives one pays at least twice what an American would for his conspicuous consumption of gasoline.  Increasingly, European governments offer incentives to individual homeowners and businesses: the UK's Energy Saving Trust distributes good conservation advice and government grants to those who go green.

The ultimate in "local" energy production is personal, according to today's BBC:

The knee brace is the latest development in a field known as "energy harvesting".  The field seeks to develop devices and mechanisms to recover otherwise-wasted energy and convert it into useful electrical energy.  "We're pretty effective batteries," Dr Donelan told BBC News. "In our fat we store the equivalent of about a 1,000kg battery."

Check out the story, stop complaining about that fatty tissue, and strap on a knee brace.  The planet will bless you.

Tired Of The "National Security" Club? Vote Obama

Just did it.  Voted online for Senator Barack Obama, thanks to the 21st century Democrats Abroad Global Presidential Primary.  Those Americans abroad who still want to cast their vote should check the Dem's Abroad website to see where you can vote in person (online voting ends February 12, but many cities abroad have scheduled fun events this entire week to entice people to vote).

I'm not normally in the practice of broadcasting my voting intentions to the world, but then, I have never had a blog before.  And since the primary purpose of my blogging is pontificating to whoever has the stamina to read my stuff...

What I mean by the same old "national security club" is this: Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator John McCain.  Hillary joined the club sometime after her election to the Senate, when she deemed it important to establish "strong-on-defense" credentials.  Her membership in the Senate Armed Services Committee reinforced the image, as did numerous photo ops with American troops.  Her campaign theme of "experience" is primarily based on her proximity to power (though it mostly consists of time spent as Arkansas and White House First Lady).  She has been in the Senate for a couple of years longer than Barack Obama (he, however, has held elective office for longer than Mrs. Clinton).

While Senator Clinton has been making a concerted effort to appear "presidential" and "ready from day one to be commander-in-chief," on the Republican side we have Senator John McCain, who needs to make no effort to fill that role.  War hero, prisoner-of-war, torture victim (and conscience of the nation on the subject), Congressman then Senator for more than a quarter century... John McCain is Mr. National Security.  Ms. National Security's "experience card" will look like a weak deck should it be a Clinton-McCain face off in November.

Though it is comforting that polls show Obama beating McCain in a general election, it's not just his electability that draws me to Barack Obama.  Since I live overseas, I am less affected by the charisma visible to Americans who see and hear him in person or on TV (there's always a French voice-over when I hear him).  And I think the constant repetition of the word "change" could eventually become grating, if not followed by specific examples.  Remember 2004 and John Kerry's constant refrain of waging "a smarter war on terror."  There was never any beef, and look where it got us.

But "change" in the conduct of US foreign affairs is what Obama can offer, and that is one of the most important things a new president must accomplish.  Hillary Clinton, coming out of the national security club mindset, is tainted by her vote in favor of invading Iraq - whatever she has said subsequently to explain her enabling vote.  But it's not over: as recently as a couple of months ago, she voted to give Bush a potential green light should he decide to attack Iran.   Again, she's on the same wavelength as John McCain, he of the "Bomb Iran" sing-along.

Back to Obama: he was criticized for his offer to talk to rogue nations, as if the only thing a real American president-wannabe should say is "bomb 'em."  But talking - or diplomacy, as it's known - is the tool that has become rusty under George W. Bush.  Obama, more than Clinton, has shown himself to be ready to engage with other countries, whether friends or not.  Though it may not matter to Americans deciding how to vote, it is significant that world public opinion wants to be engaged with a President Obama.  There is much of the same excitement that many Americans are starting to feel about the senator from Illinois.

"Change" in the national security realm is vital, and will not be easy.  Ratcheting down from a trillion dollar plus annual national security bill (as Chalmers Johnson measures actual US spending) will not be easy.  There are entrenched interests in every state of the union, and Americans have almost forgotten that non-military options - diplomacy, multilateral defense (NATO), treaties, Peace Corps - can be more effective than the "with-us-or-against-us" Bush doctrine.

Hillary Clinton would be Bush-lite, McCain-lite (or maybe Bill-lite).  Why would independents, swing voters, wavering Republicans, anti-Iraq War people of all stripes vote in a general election for a woman who triangulates her positions so much that her compass goes haywire?  Senator Barack Obama: clean slate and clear thinking on America's engagement with the world.  That's change that I can welcome.

What Diplomats Do: "Deliver the Foreigners"

Parents in the diplomatic service have to answer the same questions that other mommies and daddies do, but their answers are of necessity more complicated.  Children aren't the only ones flummoxed by what diplomats do; many an American Foreign Service Officer working for the State Department has experienced the bemused looks of neighbors and family back home.  "State" department sounds like you work in Harrisburg, Tallahassee, or any other American state capital bureaucracy.  What you're doing in Tallinn or Algiers, they have no idea.

But now, thanks to the increasingly subordinate role performed by American diplomats vis-a-vis the US military (see my blast when General David Petraeus insisted on referring to the US Ambassador to Iraq as his "diplomatic wingman"), we have a new wrinkle on the concept of diplomats-as-enablers.  The January 18, 2008 Washington Times ("State Doubles Military Advisers," by Nicholas Kralev) tells us that diplomats are much in demand in the burgeoning US military:

The State Department is doubling the number of resident diplomatic advisers that it sends to the offices of the nation's top military commanders at home and overseas — a move encouraged by the Pentagon as its uniformed leaders take on larger public roles abroad.
The diplomats also help to "deliver the foreigners," as one official put it, whenever advice or assistance is needed from allies or other countries. Sometimes, they simply offer their counsel on foreign affairs, ensuring that the commander is familiar with current U.S. policy before making public remarks.

It's good that seasoned diplomats advise generals on current US foreign policy.  After all, they have to do the same thing when US presidents persist in sending fat cat campaign donors abroad as political appointee ambassadors, in recognition of their generosity.  But it's the preamble of the article that hits the core problem: "a move encouraged by the Pentagon as its uniformed leaders take on larger public roles abroad" (emphasis added).

"Delivering the foreigners" for four star (and more junior) generals is increasingly the lot of American diplomats.  Increasingly, the US military is taking on "roles and responsibilities" (to use a good Pentagon term) that are very far from basic soldiering.  You need a website to bring the Muslims around to the American Way?  The Pentagon has it.  How about development projects, to win hearts and minds?  We got that too: the Special Operations Command excels in "public safety, agriculture, finance, economy, and support of dislocated civilian operations."

In the recent "stand up" of the Pentagon's newest regional combatant command, AFRICOM, the US military proceeded to reinvent the diplomatic and development wheels that the State Department and USAID have had in Africa ever since President John F. Kennedy determined that the United States would have a "universal" presence in every one of the newly-independent African countries that started appearing during his tenure.  A USAID veteran told me of his particular experience:

I've had conversations during 2007 with university colleagues whose brains are being picked by the Africa command folks on this side of the Atlantic.  The content of these DOD-university dialogues is often incredibly basic.  As a consequence, the new partnership crowds out long-established relationships that USAID and USDA [Agriculture Department] had/have with the university agriculture community.  The Administration has duplicated USAID with MCC [Millenium Challenge Corporation], and now the Pentagon will do so again with the Africa Command's emphasis on civilian topics.
Meanwhile, USAID's well-planned agriculture projects in Africa limp along with stagnant funding.

"Delivering the foreigners," if it means into the hands of the military, is a rather sterile exercise for American diplomats, who should have other fish to fry: figuring out what to do to help the next administration rebuild the bridges burned by the Bush Administration should be a major sub rosa priority.  The monochrome militaristic Bush/Cheney-imposed view of the world will expire, especially if the Democratic candidate takes the White House in the November election.

It's time for American diplomats to think seriously about "delivering the foreigners" for concerted action on non-military priorities like climate change, sustainable development, and stabilization of international financial flows.  The "Iraq Era," like the "Vietnam Era" before it, will pass.  Acting as "wingmen" to generals is poor practice, and will atrophy the real diplomatic skills needed to represent the United States to sovereign governments, in that majority of the world's nations that are not under US military occupation.

Low Point - Colin Powell's Credibility Curve Ball: February 5, 2003

(Photo: Rafiq Alwan, Codename "Curveball."  Source: Democracy Now!)

His own top aide said it:

I wish I had not been involved in it," says Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, a longtime Powell adviser who served as his chief of staff from 2002 through 2005. "I look back on it, and I still say it was the lowest point in my life.

Wilkerson, interviewed for CNN's 2005 documentary "Dead Wrong -- Inside an Intelligence Meltdown," was of course referring to the much-heralded (before) and much-derided and regretted (after) speech by then Secretary of State Colin Powell, in front of the United Nations Security Council on February 5, 2003.

Super Wednesday - as it might then have been called, such was the hype - was cast as the opportunity for an internationally-respected figure to present the definitive case for concerted action against Saddam Hussein.  And Colin Powell did not disappoint: there were vials of poison, slides of bio-weapons labs, the scariest stuff imaginable.  It was all the fruit of fevered imaginations: the infamous "Curveball" (though disavowed as a completely unreliable source by most serious Allied intelligence services) and his Administration enablers were at the root of the wildest Powell affirmations.  Check out the above link for the January 24, 2008 Democracy Now! Amy Goodman interview with LA Times reporter Bob Drogin, on his new book, "Curveball: Spies, Lies, and the Con Man Who Caused a War:"

Three days after Powell went to the United Nations, the UN weapons inspectors went to all of the sites, every single one of the sites that Curveball had told them about, where these weapons supposedly were being produced. And they not only didn’t find the evidence, they proved that it couldn’t be true. They found a variety of things that showed his story was wrong. All of that was ignored, was overruled, was pushed aside. And obviously we went to war on false pretenses.

It's easy now to mix up the chronology of the whirlwind of speeches, allegations, lies... leading up to the invasion of Iraq.  As Arianna Huffington said in Salon in 2003, Powell's UN speech came just days after the Presidential "Misstatement of the Union:"

The Secretary went on at great length about the intense vetting process -- "four days and three nights" locked up with the leaders of the CIA, working "until midnight, 1 o'clock every morning," going over "every single thing we knew about all of the various issues with respect to weapons of mass destruction" -- that went into deciding what information would be used in his United Nations presentation. A presentation that ultimately did not include the Niger allegation because it was not, in Powell's words, "standing the test of time."

Hmmm, just how hard is that test? Powell's U.N. speech came a mere eight days after Bush's State of the Union -- leaving one to wonder what the expiration date is on patently phony data. About a week after a president uses it, it turns out.

Huffington's reference to Niger - for those with short term memory loss - is the famous "Yellowcake-Gate," where another phony intelligence story was spun about Saddam trying to get nuclear bomb raw material from Africa.  Ambassador (ret'd.) Joe Wilson - who in an earlier manifestation had faced down Saddam Hussein as the last senior American diplomat in Baghdad in 1990 - was sent to check the story out.  Wilson went to Niger, found the story baseless, reported back to Washington, was shocked to see that the President would nonetheless tell the world that black-was-white, and spoke out publicly to set the record straight.  Yellowcake-Gate became Plame-Gate (if you want to read an excellent review of Valerie Plame's book, "Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House," read Patricia Kushlis in "Whirled View.")

Yep.  Five years ago today.  Parallel History that brought the United States to war.

The French: Don't Deal With Africa Without Them

Watching the news these days from Chad, TV viewers might be excused for time-warp comparisons with evacuations from the past: Belgians from '60s Congo; westerners from '94 Rwanda; the list goes on.  The theme here is Former European Colonial Power Saves Foreigners From Local Chaos.  As in many past evacuations, that European Power is France.  In Chad's capital N'Djamena (Fort Lamy in colonial times), those jaunty berets are a welcome sight for people who are allowed to leave.

That would include Americans.  Here's today's Guardian:

The United States, which normally maintains a large embassy in N'Djamena, principally because of the involvement of ExxonMobil and Chevron in extracting oil in southern Chad, said France had "the expertise and the lead on this issue", and would have the support of the [UN] security council "should they decide to do more".

With most of its diplomatic staff joining hundreds of other expatriates on French military flights out of Chad, the US embassy is now abandoned.

I somehow doubt that "abandoned" is the right word, but skeleton staff is highly likely.  That would include Chadian local staff, who can't just hop on a French Transall.  Here's what the State Department tells would-be American travelers to Chad:

The ability of the U.S. Embassy to assist American citizens remaining in Chad is severely limited.

It's always a good idea for American diplomats in Africa to maintain cordial relations with their French counterparts.  Sometimes their helicopters are closer than American ones.  In remote Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, it made sense to maintain (unofficial) links with the French in Reunion, just over the horizon - a lot closer than the US forces in Diego Garcia, hours away at best.  In Algeria, there was a nice tradition where the number two French and American diplomats, next door neighbors, shared keys to their garden gate.  The tradition started mostly as a way of popping in for a drink, but was a reassurance during times of security threats too.

As with all examples of military presence, there is baggage, of course.  In Chad, France has maintained a sizable force there since independence, and has similar garrisons in Ivory Coast, Djibouti, and elsewhere (somewhat outdated but useful LeMonde map).  African leaders have mixed feelings about this lingering presence, despite their affection for French leaders who have engaged with Africa - "Chirac l'africain," Mitterand and his "Monsieur Afrique," etc.  In those countries where it was the colonial power - notably Chad, most recently with the "Arche de Zoe" affair - anything France does is bound to find regional detractors.  In the current Chadian crisis, the French stance has been active, while steering clear of political intervention.  The Christian Science Monitor points out why:

France's major turnabout reflects both the hands-off philosophy of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and France's desire to lead a new European Union humanitarian peacekeeping force of troops of 3,700 men (2,100 of them French soldiers) to protect aid convoys to Darfur refugees living in Chad. The EUFOR mission would be the largest common defense mission in European Union history.

With increasing American (AFRICOM) military interest in Africa - concomitant with growing Chinese interest in Africa's resources - the US is wise to defer at times to the French on African matters.  Though on a global scale the US military dwarfs all others (just look at the latest Defense budget), France is still willing and able to "project power" in Africa.  In the latter days of the Clinton administration, I heard a Defense Department official tell a group of American ambassadors and military officers: "The French may be frustrating, but you don't want to engage without them."  In the twilight of the Bush administration, militarily overextended throughout the world, but launching yet another military command for the one continent that had been "overlooked" by Pentagon planners, will the US learn any lessons from the behavior of a new French president eager to break with an interventionist past?

"Stellet Licht" - A Shimmering Silent Light

To watch Stellet Licht (released in the English-speaking world as "Silent Light," or in the Hispanic world of Mexican director Carlos Reygadas, "Luz Silenciosa") with pleasure, you have to:

• Be able to watch a camera shot for as long as it takes the sun to rise;
• Accept the idea that a Mexican film can be almost devoid of Spanish dialog;
• Be attentive to the background sounds as much as the visuals;
• Accept the idea that Mennonites can commit adultery within their community;
• Tolerate the notion that an award-winning film can feature not only non-stars, but complete unknowns.

If you are capable of the above, then prepare for a treat with this film out of the great plains of Chihuahua.  Already, reviews confirm Cannes' 2007 Jury Award, with lines like "prayer-like visuals," or "masterpiece," or "'Ordet' (a 1955 rural life classic by Dane Carl Dreyer, to which Leonard Maltin has awarded ****) has found its Mexican reincarnation."

(Photo Source: Bac Films)

It's reassuring (or should be to American Mennonites, who may not yet have had a chance to see the film) that the London Mennonite Centre's homepage shows the film's official British-release poster, along with this excerpt from a review:

"The award-winning film, Silent Light, is a wonderful, profound and moving film about the spiritual crisis of a Mennonite farmer in Mexico who is having an affair. Filmed entirely in a Mennonite community and using only Mennonite non-actors, Silent Light is a slow-paced, beautiful and sensitive portrayal of Mennonite life in Mexico." — Vic Thiessen

I just hope that American Mennonites are not offended by the theme of adultery, which, as we know, has been around since, well, Biblical times.  I grew up in southeastern Pennsylvania, which has longstanding and large Mennonite (sometimes referred to - perhaps not geographically or religiously accurately - as "Pennsylvania Dutch") population.  I remember the community as appearing socially conservative (family, "plainness" in all senses, including dress) though this Q & A from the London Mennonite Centre gives fuller background:

Who are the Mennonites?

 

Mennonites are Christians who love Jesus, follow his teaching, live in the forgiveness he made possible, and experience the power he gives through the Holy Spirit to transform their lives. In particular, Mennonites derive from a part of the Reformation known as Anabaptists or 'the radical reformation'. Discipleship, mutual support, following Jesus' hard teaching on loving enemies and concern for justice and right living have been particularly important for Mennonites. Read about Dirk Willems, an Anabaptist who loved his enemy and paid with his life.

Mennonites take their name from a priest, Menno Simons, who spent much of the 16th century travelling the Netherlands, preaching, teaching and encouraging other Anabaptists, and by God's grace escaped arrest from both Protestant and Roman Catholic authorities.

Reygadas captures how such a community still lives in 21st century Mexico in his film.  I didn't even realize the significance at first when several scenes show visitors arriving unannounced, and people called away from a dinner table to greet someone at the door.  Well, of course - if you don't have telephones, you're always going to have to just "stop by."  The particular community depicted - we are told by the film's publicity material that there are more than 100,000 Mennonites in northern Mexico - has adapted to other aspects of modern life (cars and pickup trucks, combines, and hospitals).  The pervasive "silence" is reinforced by a script that has the characters only utter the strict minimum, and always in a completely credible monotone.

I've enthused enough; please just go and see the film.  It's like watching paint dry (and I mean this in a positive sense - just check the official website, and be sure to click on "English" for a stunning still shot from the film's opening sequence).