Song from the Forest

For nearly 30 years, New Jersey-native Louis Sarno has lived his life in the forests of the Central African Republic, among the Bayaka pygmies, drawn to them by their music.

He now acts as a guardian, unofficial medicine man and minor financial sponsor, but has been truly embraced by the tribe, speaking their language and holding an equal place among men, even fathering a son.

When his son Samedi was very young, he became very sick and as Louis held him he made him a promise that he would show him the world, so now he’s old enough, he’s heading to the bright lights of New York City.

Samedi speaks no English, but seems to have no trouble adjusting to the materialistic pursuits of living in the big smoke, though he does show signs of homesickness, particularly in relation to food. Meanwhile, Louis struggles much more to fit in, longing for the forest that has become his home.

But despite his longing, he also paradoxically explains the ways in which he’s watched the forest change and his saddest observation concerns the flautists – there are none left in the tribe to play.

In his time in the forest Louis gathered thousands of hours of recordings of the Bayaka music, but little time is given to this pursuit or to the music itself.

I also think the documentary fails to adequately answer how and why Louis ended up in the forest. It skirts over the fact that he has a son and his relationship with his son’s mother.

Louis doesn’t reveal how he feels about constant requests for money or some of the illnesses that have hit the tribe, including tuberculosis.

It doesn’t really ever answer the question about how Louis feels about his own health issues.

Ultimately, this is a beautiful, touching and unique story that is badly told.

In documentaries where the subjects are long dead, there is the inevitability of unanswered questions or in others there may be a deliberate attempt to make the audience think for itself and come to its own conclusions.

This feels like a documentary that never really gets to the heart of how and why Louis has made the decisions of his lifetime.

There’s much time spent talking to his friends and family back in America, which feels a step too far in the narrative when we haven’t really heard Louis articulate some of these issues for himself.

There’s also a scene with his golf-putting brother that feels like a cross between a snippet of The Wolf of Wall Street and some sort of terrible American motivational video – the feeling was wrong, the setting was wrong and his tone was completely unnatural and scripted.

The first challenge of a documentary filmmaker is to find the story and convince a subject to agree to be part of a project.

But it’s truly business time when it’s time to tell the story. The viewer of this movie walks away with many more questions than answers, in a frustration that isn’t really justifiable, given the access to the chief protagonist and those close to him.