According
to Sarah Jordan (played by Angelina Jolie) in Beyond
Borders, there are some 50 million refugees
in the world; the United Nations High Commission for Refugees
handles half, and various nongovernmental organizations
cope with what they can of the rest. Directed by Martin
Campbell, the film is dedicated to the refugees and the
aid workers, whose courage makes life possible where hope
is almost lost. The principal focus is on Dr. Nick Callahan
(played by Clive Owen), who represents a courageous NGO,
presumably Medicines sans Frontières. The story
begins in 1984 at a banquet of a fictional Aid Relief Organization
in London. After Sarah's father-in-law receives praise
for generous donations to the organization. Callahan bursts
into the banquet hall with an emaciated ten-year-old Ethiopian
boy whose condition provokes tears from Sarah. Having just
returned from Ethiopia with the boy, Callahan lambastes
the organization for spending funds on the banquet but
has nothing for a very real crisis in Ethiopia, where millions
are starving and dying from disease. Soon, Callahan and
the boy are arrested for the intrusion. Callahan is released
after being taken to a police station. The boy, sent to
an alien detention center, manages to escape; the next
day he is found dead from overexposure to the cold. Sarah
then decides to cash in her life savings, go to Ethiopia
to see conditions for herself, and, before the film ends,
she ends up visiting similar non-UNHCR refugee camps in
Cambodia in 1989 and Chechnya in 1995 (though the actual
locations are Kenya and Canada). What filmviewers learn
is that UNHCR helps only the politically correct refugees;
the most desperate cases are left for the NGOs, which are
understaffed and undersupplied, often in war zones. Although
Dr. Callahan speaks quite harshly to Sarah about her unexpected
presence in Ethiopia, both before and after she delivers
to him several thousand dollars in traveler's checks, she
falls in love with him for his courage amid impossible
conditions. Since she can only observe, Sarah leaves but
hopes to learn of Dr. Callahan's whereabouts in the future.
On returning to London, she resigns from her job in an
art gallery to assume a position at UNHCR. Her visits to
Dr. Callahan in 1989 and 1995 occur after her sister Charlotte
(played by Teri Polo) tracks him down; each time, she leaves
her loving husband Henry Bauford (played by Linus Roache)
and family. One of the children whom she leaves behind
is conceived while she is with Dr. Callahan in a Khmer
Rouge-controlled zone within Cambodia, so one purpose of
the 1995 visit is to inform him that he has a daughter.
Filmviewers will correctly expect that one of the two or
both will die in the end, given the hazardous conditions
of aiding victims of wars, and the story appears rather
amateurish in combining Saving
Private Ryan (1988) with Tears
of the Sun (2002). Nevertheless, the
conditions depicted on the screen of Ethiopia, Cambodia,
and Chechnya are so stark that the Political Film Society
has nominated Beyond Borders for
an award as best film exposé of the year as well
as best film in raising consciousness about both human
rights and peace. MH
I
want to comment on this film
