It would also be impossible to think of _The Forgiven_
without being reminded of a related real-life story.
7 years ago I was embedded in an NGO in an impoverished
African nation where our American engineer hit and
killed a teenager. Driving was always hazardous there;
there wasn't a single traffic light or a stop sign in
the country. That was why we had designated local
drivers. Just days earlier I had cautioned against
his reckless driving, to no avail. I was in a second
car and did not see the accident. He was jailed but
got off due to what might be called as a technicality.

I liked the team, made up of recent college graduates
and which could have come out of woke central casting.
(People who volunteer for such missions were seldom the
most well-adjusted, middle-of-the-road types, myself
included.) They had a really hard job, suiting up
half the day in noisy bio-hazard level 4 labs and
spending the remaining work hours in a hot, cramped,
repurposed steel container. Their only entertainment
was shopping on amazon for things they would not see
during their tour of duty, and making up conflicts
to keep boredom at bay. I was the observer/coordinator,
in reality a glorified clerk and janitor; what they
did was far more heroic and dangerous.

But after the accident, I certainly did not admire
the way they closed rank against the victim's family,
just like the party-goers do in _The Forgiven_. The
tropes were so familiar: never calling the victim by
his name; accusing his family of being greedy.
A $1000 compensation was eventually offered, just
like in the film; this was apparently the universal
"blood money" figure in third world countries. It
was the cost of a life. The NGO could easily have
offered ten times as much; my round-trip airfare
cost them $10,000. For that amount, my only real
accomplishment was to insist on calling the teen
by his name in the report I got to write as
official record-keeper. His name was Hassan.

You don't need to be super-rich, or a racist, or a
religious bigot, to dehumanize the Other. Survival
instincts and natural group dynamics will do that
nicely. The film that captures this world perfectly
is Sean Penn's _The Last Face_, a fictionalized
story about my favorite charity "Doctors without
Borders." It shows the volunteer staff performing
heroically in impossible situations, but this also
makes they feel entitled, which can be expressed as
superiority over the very locals they are helping.
_The Last Face_ also brilliantly personifies the
two type of people drawn to such organizations:
the idealists (Charlize Theron) who want to save
everyone, and the realists (Javier Bardem) who
know they can do only what little they can. The
latter bend the rules, play well with the local
population, bend bribe them with whiskey and
cigarettes (exactly what our replacement engineer
did). The idealists have no business in the field;
they are better off being desk jockeys. _The Last
Face_ was hissed at during its premiere at Cannes
by journalists/critics. They were dead wrong, as
they are more often than not.*

My story actually had a real villain, unlike _The
Forgiven_. It was the corporate manager who just
happened to be on site for training purposes. We
would have done well with the sensible lab director
in charge, but the manager had to intervene. She
could decide on nothing without consulting with
the suits, literally 10 time zones and 7000 miles
away, paralyzing the lab. She talked the team into
toeing her party line, especially regarding the blood
money. They had a career to worry about. I had no
use for her nonsense. When she asked me to lie
about the event (I was in charge of communication)
we never spoke to each other again. That was the
end of my second-career NGO aspiration. I am
better off being a desk jockey, too.

Still, it was a valuable, unforgettable experience.
I attended a Health Ministry monthly meeting where
British, French, Italian, and Chinese representatives
vied for influence, but the American CDC made it
clear they called the shot. They provided most of
the funding, and permanently took over a conference
suite in the most expensive hotel as their HQ.
American soft power was a sight to behold. (The
hotel was teeming with prostitutes, and no doubt
spies; the waiters called us Mr.'s and Mrs.'s as
though this was still the colonial times.) The
Europeans and Chinese were not there only for
altruistic reasons; they wanted to learn the
mechanics of dealing with an epidermic in case it
happened on their soil. The lessons were forgotten
when COVID and Trump rolled around. But I flew
home in the company of Icelandic missionaries
trying to build schools, which was a challenge when
they did not have clean running water. There were
really a lot of good people there trying to make
a difference.

-------------------------------------------------

*Sean Penn gets the last mention. In his younger
days he was a hothead who married Madonna and punched
paparazzi. Then he turned into an actor, writer,
and director with admirably integrity. He also
traveled to war torn Ukraine to make documentaries --
something that earned him grudging respect even from
the MAGA crowd. I don't agree with everything he did
regarding politics (or even art), but in a perverted
era when the internet obsesses over a certain
coke-snorting misogynist actor and heaps praise on
Tom Cruise just for making money, Sean Penn comes
off as a true American hero, and a worthy heir of
what we used to call the Western Civilization.