Benda Bilili! [MOVIE REVIEW]
Ricki, one of the founders of Staff Benda Bilili, a band that formed as street musicians in the Congo and has since won worldwide acclaim.
There cannot be many more squalid places to live than Kinshasa on the wrong side of the Congo River in the ironically named Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The thug dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko, civil war, and poverty have done much to ravage an already reeling population. Factor in the results of a polio epidemic and an almost complete lack of any government-provided social services after the one viable homeless shelter burns to the ground and you begin to understand the plight of Ricky, Coco, Junana and Coude, men without means or functional legs who have formed Staff Benda Bilili, a street band whose name means “beyond appearances.”
Incorporated into the band are two highly talented adolescents, shégués or street kids, rescued by Ricky. Roger, 13, a prodigy with his self-made satongéa, a metal string attached to a tin can yielding a haunting, melodic, almost romantic sob, determined at an early age that music would be his salvation and that of his tribal family and so left his village for the big city. Randi, an orphan, was a child of the streets whose talent with homemade percussion attracted Ricky’s attention and protection.
Performing in front of restaurants, practicing at the city zoo, this handicapped group of society’s outcasts attracts the attention of two French documentarians determined to help them achieve their dream of recording an album and of performing in Europe – that “country,” as one of the musicians remarks, where not everyone is allowed to go. Filmed over a five-year span, “Benda Bilili!” follows the blossoming of the band and its leader, Ricky, as he tries to hold them all together and protect the other “unwanteds” of his extended family. These are people who celebrate in song that they are happy to at least have cardboard to sleep on; that perhaps someday they may come upon a mattress; and even more remotely, that they may, God willing, be able to provide a roof over the heads of loved ones.
This is a story of their failings and their even more surprising successes as they overcome obstacles unthinkable anywhere but in the Third World. This is the story of talented, makeshift musicians devoted to home and family and determined to celebrate forward movement in life and not victimization.
Screened at Cannes and the SXSW Film Festival, “Benda Bilili!” is a very good film, but it should have been better. Like most documentaries, the directors were self indulgent when it came to footage and editing. Initially propelling the film forward with the story of the band in their home base of Kinshasa, they lose focus as dreams are met and the band begins to achieve international success. Unable to sustain momentum, the directors end the film after the dénouement has been achieved, making everything that follows anti-climatic. And yet, following this ragged bunch through their journey is extremely uplifting. Any time spent with Ricky is time well spent. ER