Africa World Documentary Film Festival Review – MULLY

Review by Stephen Tronicek

MULLY screens at the Africa World Documentary Film Festival Friday, February 5, 2016 at 6:00. The festival takes place at the Missouri History Museum, 5700 Lindell Blvd (63112). For a complete schedule of all of the films, go HERE

Scott Haze’s MULLY brings up the one of the most interesting questions about a documentary. That is, is it possible to make a documentary about a person that is so inherently good, that there’s actually a chance that their story might not be compelling? That is in fact possible. Charles Mully was one of the leading merchants of oil and goods in Africa, but one day he stopped his entire enterprise, and used the large sum of money that he had acquired to help the homeless children of Africa. He eventually grew this into one of the largest children’s care organizations in the world. That’s a powerful story and an inspiring piece of work, but it leaves a notion that there’s nothing really interesting in the subject himself. How do you make a film compelling if the protagonist has already un-ironically become the greatest person on the planet? It certainly helps that Mully himself is a very charismatic person. He’s mostly featured as an offscreen narrator, but he’s a warm storyteller who can really carry much of the story.

I also helps to show how the actions of a good person can lead to the dislike of others. For all his good intentions there were still people that Mully failed to satisfy, or who he burdened too much. The accounts of these people are what makes the film so rewarding. They mostly include family members who slowly had to watch the business that he had built fall apart as he dumped money into saving the children, but their talk about his detachment from them and his all giving into this plan create a palpable sense of tension as one starts to realize that everything in this process could have fallen apart.
A spiritual element that the film has also keeps it engaging. The whole “man being so good” ideals of the film perfectly ties in with the more secular aspects of the story, and even the most jaded person will break at it. There’s too much confidence in Mully, and the film to make it seem in anyway preachy.
In the effort to tell Mully’s story there are also acted sections it the film. They are just as compelling as the rest of it, and the actors are real finds. It gives the sense that the filmmakers could have made a narrative drama out of Mully’s story and it would have been just as good. If one pops up from the same filmmakers it wouldn’t be a surprise.

MULLY is a good documentary about a subject who is surprisingly compelling. Mully himself is an interesting character, and the way that his story and actions affected people is even more interesting. This seems like a comfort food movie, and is definitely a more optimistic documentary.