Witnesses to unspeakable tragedy often go numb, their hearts and minds stuck in the memory and the images of the worst of it. Not Brian Steidle, a U.S. Marine captain who monitored the early months of the Sudanese civil war cease-fire. In Darfur, a western Sudanese province, Steidle saw and photographed charred bodies, desperate refugees and enough carnage committed by government-sanctioned Arab militia groups — the Janjaweed, translated as “devil on horseback” — to haunt the rest of his days.
He did not withdraw into private grief, however. The wrenching new documentary “The Devil Came on Horseback” tells Steidle’s story, a Westerner’s story, to explore what really happened and continues in Darfur, and the maddening, tentative political response to the genocide.
It is not an easy film to watch, nor should it be. It is, however, beautifully made. Annie Sund- berg and Ricki Stern, the co-directors, wrangle their information and lay it out clearly, vividly and with a sharp sense of focus.
Steidle himself is the opposite of a showboating personality. In the Marine Corps, he says, the ethos is simple and compelling: “Do what you have to do,” and then “get out.” In Darfur he and others monitoring a bloody, deteriorating situation could not do this. They could not strike back, or prevent suffering. They were observers, with cameras, and while world leaders quibbled over semantics (was this genocide or merely a “crisis”?) Steidle saw enough to test his very soul.
In the New York Times, Nicholas D. Kristof made Steidle’s photographs of the slaughter public, and gave the Darfur atrocities an all-too-human face. “The Devil Came on Horseback” is very smart about not letting Steidle, a humble good man, dominate things. He is simply our way into a series of larger, deeper stories of surviving refugees who have lost most or all of their families, their homes, everything. Yet they have lived to tell of it, as has Steidle. “I’m going to talk [about Darfur] until no one listens anymore,” he says quietly. With an estimated 400,000 dead since 2003, and 2.5 million Sudanese left homeless in the wake of the genocide, ignoring the story doesn’t seem like a humane option.
‘The Devil Came on Horseback’
*** 1/2
Directed by Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern; photographed by Jerry Risius, Phil Cox, Tim Hetherington, William Rexer II, Sundberg and John Keith Wasson; music by Paul Brill; edited by Joey Grossfield; produced by Sundberg, Stern, Gretchen Wallace and Jane Wells. An International Film Circuit release; opens Friday at the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave. Running time: 1:25.
No MPAA rating (parents cautioned for violence).
**** EXCELLENT
*** GOOD
** FAIR
* POOR
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mjphillips@tribune.com
