Movie Review: Invisibles

An inside look at the forgotten, and often foresaken, societies of the world


In a world where things seem more-or-less under control it is easy to forget the thousands of crimes and lapses of moral conscious that occur every day. This documentary focuses on several groups of specific international populations that suffer severely at the hands of these overlooked breakdowns of justice. Some have their roots in politics gone wild: rebel regimes and military governments. Others are founded in the simple injustice and fascism of the international corporation, which in many countries assumes the power of life or death over local populations without ever passing a law.

The first set of lethal breakdowns in moral justice concerns the choices corporations make when they perform drug research. There have been several films describing this issue in the past several years, such as Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan’s “So Much So Fast,” about the Heywood family’s struggle with ALS (aka: “Lou Gehrig’s Disease”). ALS and the “sleeping sickness” (African trypanosomiasis) used as an example in “Invisibles,” are two of a number of “orphan” diseases that are serious enough to kill thousands every year, but not serious enough to promise the sales required to justify corporate investment in a cure.

Possibly the most revealing fact in the film is the note that the recent upsurge in the production of the drug that cures sleeping sickness was due not to a concern about the fatal illness, but to the discovery that the drug also controls hair growth. This is a parallel fact to the 1500 patents for drugs that control weight gain and promise landslide sales to body-conscious moderns and giga-profits for drug companies. Decisions are made. Some live and some die based on the promised monetary contributions of the beneficiaries of the drug. Provided with the in-depth interviews and inside look at social conditions around the world, you will can be the judge as to the adequacy of this decision-making process.

The second set of transgressions concern the breakdown of morality in violent societies. Through interviews with victims and local aid providers, viewers are given an inside look at societies where warlords still run the show. In fact, the majority of the crimes therein are directed at women, frequently the victims of rape, kidnapping and an institutionalized lack of human rights. When societies break down, women frequently bear the brunt of the damage as respect for the family structure disintegrates in favor of brute survival. The victims live in countries that have to strategic value to America or other world powers. They are not worth the time to control because there is no profit in controlling them. The citizens are left to fend for themselves, with mixed results.

The children of the world also suffer as order gives way to warlord controlled societies. The film provides a sharp focus on one of the most amazing outcomes of child abuse in the world; its uniqueness is testimony to the extreme measures that will be required to cope. The example is the epidemic kidnapping of small children for the purpose of increasing the fighting forces of private armies. Warlords mandate the ongoing stealing of children for the purposes of brainwashing them into soldiers to fight their battles.

Over a ten year period of indoctrination and abuse the average five year old child can be turned in to an effective, and fearless, fifteen year old machine gun wielding soldier. The solution: a camp where children go at night to sleep in security, away from their villages. The children travel from miles around just to find a secure place to sleep in crude, but effective, clapboard dormitories. When they arise in the morning, they leave to return to their homes and schools.

Although offering little in the way of solutions to the worlds problems, “Invisibles” provides a medium for refusing to ignore the truth. There can be no other effective first step.

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