Beyond Borders
2003’s Beyond Borders is beyond boring. Directed by Martin Campbell (Casino Royale, The Mask of Zorro), this film about humanitarian aid workers and their turbulent romance is set against the backdrop of some of the world’s most horrific and tragic locales. The movie has good enough intentions, I suppose, as it is based on lead actress Angelina Jolie’s own experiences as a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN. From her experiences, Jolie wrote Notes from My Travels, a collection of journal entries detailing her experiences traveling to troubled Third World countries.
Many likely chided Beyond Borders for being little more than a public service announcement for the “dark corners” of the world. Yet it is so much more than that! It is also a romance that shamelessly uses the backdrops of tragedy and genocide to push the two leads together. While it focuses somewhat on the humanitarian causes, the majority of the film spends time denigrating into action-adventure-romance territory and derails completely by the final scenes. Looking at the film as a pure romantic adventure story, it’s awfully bland. Looking at it for much more than that is simple futility.
The idea here is to put the spotlight on those brave humanitarian workers that put their lives on the line each day in troubled corners of the world. That these people need our attention, support, and admiration is obvious. I do not doubt the sincerity of Angelina Jolie, either, and I refuse to judge her as an individual. I believe that she means well and I also believe that the media and a celebrity-obsessed culture in the West often miss the point with star-crossed eyes. Having that said, a film like Beyond Borders does nothing to further any cause but the cause of bad filmmaking.
Jolie stars as Sarah Jordan, an American living in London sometime in the 1980s. She is married to the son of a wealthy British industrialist. Eventually, she encounters handsome rogue doctor Nick Callahan (Clive Owen) and not only is his name really cool, but he helps dying people in Third World countries. Feeling instantly smitten by either his powerful message or his smouldering eyes, Sarah heads to Africa to find out what all the fuss is about. While there, her eyes are opened and she sets off on a life-changing journey of self-discovery and danger. Naturally, Sarah and Nick fall in love.
The movie takes us from Africa to Cambodia to Chechnya as a way of expressing that this relationship between Nick and Sarah is timeless and has no limitation to the historical backdrop it can use. The relationship is treated like an entity here, as it serves to remind us that love knows no borders. Beyond Borders, get it? Sarah and Nick’s romance is an attempt to capitalize on the sweeping epics of bygone days, as we get to see this couple meet, leave each other, meet again, leave each other again, meet again, and get into all sorts of adventures along the way. Instead of being sweeping, Beyond Borders is simply being cheeky.
Jolie is pretty terrible here. I want to like her as an actress, I really do, but I haven’t been able to find that niche in which she fits quite yet. When I do, I’ll call her up and tell her what kind of role she should play. Until then, we’re bound to see her struggling like this. Jolie’s Sarah arrives in Africa bathed in white like some sort of angelic glamour demigod from Beverly Hills, which isn’t so far off the part she plays. It plays nicely off of the point that a rich woman wants to do well and isn’t quite prepared for what she must do. In that respect, the choice (accidental or not) of focusing in on her lips throughout the film seems an interesting distraction for the supposed real purpose. What is the supposed real purpose? Damned if I know.
Clive Owen works well, but the framework of the film is just so hollow and pretentious that it becomes hard to bear. I read one poor chap’s review over on IMBD that claimed that the people who hadn’t enjoyed this movie lacked appreciation for “subtlety.” As far as I’m concerned, Beyond Borders has the subtlety of a shovel to the face. The idea that real infants and starving children are utilized as a backdrop for what is essentially a romance is hardly subtle. It’s hardly good. It’s hardly decent. Instead, Beyond Borders serves to want it both ways, pursuing a tone of glamour and romance up front and pestilence, starvation, and death in the background. The idea that the backdrop would lend the foreground a sort of poignancy is the worst kind of vulgarity that Hollywood twaddle can muster.
The direction highlights this point a little bit more, showing us when it’s okay to ditch our concerns for the starving people and dig in to a juicy bit of romance. The shots that reveal the film’s gaudy priorities chime in right away, as we experience long and medium shots for the first bit and then suddenly sink in to close-ups of our doting pair as they begin to realize they’re in love. When the film realizes that it is a romance, things become a lot closer and the distance of being in this desolate world is pulled back in. It’s effective and the difference in cinematography technique is clear.
Beyond Borders sacrifices good taste for what it believes to be a sweeping romance. Its ability to do so is tempered, luckily, with Clive Owen’s good performance. The manipulation of the backdrops to augment what’s happening in the foreground is among the most shameful I’ve seen recently, but I’m sure it’s been done in a far worse way before people knew better. Beyond that point, the film is simply rather boring. The romance, try as I might to offer it criticism, is insanely hollow and poorly written. Jolie’s performance is cold and the rest of the film is simply flimsy. Beyond Borders is, as one reviewer put it, “beyond bad.”
Trailer:
