Film Looks ‘Closer’ at AIDS

“This is a story about the way the world is,” asserts the narrator of A Closer Walk, director Robert Bilheimer’s recent documentary about the AIDS pandemic. It is not just the world of those directly affected by AIDS: the movie’s message is that the AIDS crisis is every bit as reflective of the situation and character of those who have not dealt with it as those who have.

The film, narrated by Glenn Close and Will Smith, explores the pain, suffering and human cruelty associated with AIDS and stories of people living with it and living through it all across the world. Most of all, it emphasized the role that those—individuals, families, nations—not directly affected by AIDS have played in letting it result in such a crisis.

What kind of people, the film asks, would not do something about the little Ugandan girl who lies dying in its opening scene, tiny, desperate and obviously in pain? What kind of people could ignore such suffering, or, perhaps even worse, feel shocked or sympathetic but do nothing?

Indeed, the film’s title refers not only to bringing audiences a truer picture of AIDS victims, but also forcing reexamination of their own actions and beliefs in light of such new information.

Both the film and its director were often critical in this respect. Bilheimer, who spoke at a Kennedy School screening sponsored by the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy on Nov. 18, called for moral outcry—which he clearly believed had been too long in coming—from the citizens of more developed, affluent countries .

He alluded to John Adams’ letter to his wife Abigail stating a need for “a revolution in the hearts of the people”—a movement for change equal to those for civil rights and against the Vietnam War.

But his tone had the pessimism and frustration of someone who had clearly seen more than his share of pain.

“And when John Adams and his friend Thomas Jefferson were writing that famous document, the Declaration of Independence, they said, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident.’ What’s happened, you know?” Bilheimer continued reflectively, his voice breaking. “What’s happened to these proud notions? I wonder.”

Greg Behrman, author of The Invisible People: How the U.S. Has Slept Through the Global AIDS Pandemic, the Greatest Humanitarian Catastrophe of Our Times, who also participated in the event, was similarly disparaging of the global response to AIDS.

“At the end of the day, you’ll see that at so many turns, we could’ve done so much, and we failed to,” he said.

A Closer Walk came as the latest in a series of politically oriented documentaries for both Bilheimer and the Carr Center.

Bilheimer earned an Academy Award nomination for his previous film, Cry of Reason, which told the story of Beyers Naude, a South African anti-apartheid leader.

As for the Carr Center, which also coordinates speaking engagements, research conferences and policy discussions, film series have long provided a way for them to fulfill their mission of bringing human rights issues to the forefront of public policy debates.

A speaker from the foundation explained they had chosen to show the movie because it is “an extraordinary learning experience.”

For the audience at the event that night, the film was meant as a lesson and a call to action. Bilheimer’s assertion that it was morally incumbent upon everyone to do what they could based on their own capabilities seemed to ring especially true for those whose positions made them capable of so much.

Bilheimer reinforced this notion, saying, “We have to step out of our privilege and isolation and make this an issue on American campuses as students have done before.”

He also alluded to the leadership potential of those to whom he was speaking.

“Who knows who the Gandhi or Mandela…of the AIDS movement is?” he said at the conclusion of his remarks. “Maybe it’s someone in this room. But God knows, we have to find that person.”

The audience didn’t know either, but they did leave sure of the fact that, whoever the leader of the movement would be, it was their responsibility to play some part in it.