A reflection on Stones in the Sun:
The long-last effects of brutalization, trauma, and exile
Introduction
In her film, Stones in the Sun, Patricia Benoit explores how brutalization and trauma suffered under a Haitian dictatorial regime incurs long-lasting effects, and how refugees escaping such a situation face tough choices surrounding cultural assimilation, through the example of the film’s three interwoven and deeply personal stories of Haitian migrants who’ve fled to New York and are forced to move forward with their lives while confronting their past. In this article, I will be exploring how Benoit accomplishes this by analyzing how the characters individually deal with their personal traumas and the process of assimilating into US culture.
It is important to note that the dictatorship is not named. As Benoit notes in an interview about the movie, “In the film I didn’t want to get into political specificities or talk about certain specific political leaders”. Benoit and her family fled Haiti under the Duvalier regime, but she wanted the movie to be less specific and more universalizable. She continues, noting “One of the things I wanted to talk about was the invisible wounds of exile”; “that’s something I’ve lived with ever since I was little”.
The Storylines
Micheline and Yannick
Micheline
She is a divorced real estate agent who fled Haiti and has lived in the United States for 20+ years. She has one daughter, Jenny, and Yannick is her sister.
Yannick
She is a university professor in Haiti, who stayed to support political activism instead of pursuing higher education opportunities in the United States.
In the film, The storyline with Micheline and Yannick explores the issue of cultural assimilation. Micheline distances herself from her Haitian heritage and assimilates into US culture, while Yannick embraces her heritage and refuses to assimilate.
At the beginning of the film, it is revealed that Micheline is a real estate agent. When placing a call for work, someone asks her about her last name, Vaneau. Michelin proudly states that the name is French. While it is not explored further, I would argue that this is a convenient way for Micheline to sidestep her Haitian heritage, from which it seems she is intentionally distancing herself from in order to best assimilate into US Culture. When confronted with news of the atrocities happening in Haiti, such as when Yannick is watching Haitian news, or a flyer is placed on her windshield by Ronald, Micheline is quick to dismiss it and turns a blind eye, telling Yannick to turn off the news and crumpling up the piece of paper.
During a blood drive at Jenny’s school, Micheline is unable to donate blood because she was born in Haiti. When forced to face the racism surrounding Haitian migrants and HIV in the 1980’s, Micheline gets extremely upset and tries to lay out essentially how “Americanized” she has become in the 20 years of living in the US and how she should not face the same stigma that the “other” Haitians face. I believe this is another way of her distancing herself from her Haitian heritage.
When doing laundry, Yannick hangs laundry to dry outside, an innocent action on the part of Yannick as it is what she is used to doing at home in Haiti, but is an action that Micheline chastises her for as it does not fit into the culture she has fit herself into. The sisters disagree with how the other is handling the transition into US culture, with Yannick feeling that her sister has wrongly dropped everything about her Haitian identity and Micheline, in the words of the director, “feels that [her] sister … has just wasted her life”.
Ronald and Vita
Ronald
He is a former Haitian resistance election official, who fled to New York to avoid violence and persecution. He drives a Taxi for a living
Vita
Vita is Ronald’s wife, who follows in his footsteps to come to New York from Haiti. At the hands of the regime’s military, she is violently sexually assualted. From this traumatic event she suffers from nightmares and lasting difficulties.
Ronald and Vita’s story explores the lasting trauma felt by those brutalized under Haitian dictatorship. At several points in the film, Ronald attempts to make sexual advances with his wife Vita, but is turned away by a scared Vita clearly who is clearly not ready in the wake of the trauma suffered back in Haiti. She suffers from nightmares, and likely has PTSD from the event.
This storyline is told mostly through emotionally gripping scenes rather than dialogue discussing it. In an interview about the film, Benoit notes that “One of the things that I really wanted to talk about in the film [was] how it’s so difficult to understand other people’s pain and I think that’s something that’s universal for everyone. It’s very hard to really truly understand the pain that someone else is feeling, it’s hard for them to talk about it, it’s hard for them to describe it, and I think it’s very hard for the listener to hear it and to take it in”. She also notes that “I didn’t want to show the rape [as] something sexual, I really wanted to show it as something violent and I tried to show very little in the same way that there’s violence in the film but I try to show very little of it becuase for me what’s important is the aftermath of the violence [and] how the violence affects people”.
Gerald and Maximus
Gerald
Born in Haiti but fleeing due to political unrest and violence under the dictatorship, he is a left-wing radio host who runs a program called “Drums of the People”, which broadcasts Haitian political news. He is married to and lives with a white woman who is pregnant with their child.
Maximus
Maximus Mesir, father of Gerald, is a former regime official who left for New York after a failed power struggle in Haiti. He is responsible for overseeing atrocities and the deaths of many civilians at the hands of his military, including Micheline and Yannick’s father.
The story of Gerald and Max explores escaping your past life, and serves to provide contextual information about the dictatoral regime as well as a central story to tie the other two storylines together. Gerald and Max escaped the same country but for different reasons. Gerald, who has not spoken to his father for over 10 years as he distances himself from the awful actions of his father,
Through the story, we see Gerald coming to terms with the reality of his connection to his father and by extension his father’s actions. At the beginning of the film, it is revealed that he has changed his last name from Mesir to Akao. This is done to distance himself from his father. When Max shows up at his door, Gerald welcomes him by asking when he is leaving. When listening to Gerald’s radio show, Max grows upset at realizing that his son has changed his last name. Max confronts Gerald about the name change, and Gerald responds by telling him to pack his bags. Max drinks to cope as he reflects on how his actions have ruined his relationship with his son. Later, when Gerald asks his father to leave again, the two argue about their relationship and the two physically fight, and Gerald remarks “Better to have a bad father but a good man”.
Towards the end of the film we see Gerald begin to reconcile with his father and his actions. While he ends up kicking him out, Gerald saves his dad from being attacked by the mob of protestors. Additionally, in perhaps the biggest gesture of acceptance of his father’s actions, he introduces himself on his radio show as “Gerald Mesir”, reclaiming his family last name despite the fact that associating himself with his father puts him in an extremely vulnerable position within the local Haitian community. I believe this can be regarded as mostly, if not fully, accepting his relationship to his father.
The Ending
At the end of the movie, the three storylines intersect. Vita sees Maximus at a convenience store and attacks him, knowing that the trauma she suffered happened under his direction. Maximus is then dragged by protestors to the site of a protest outside of Gerald's house, where Haitian protestors begin to beat Maximus until he is dragged inside by his son Gerald. Yannick takes Micheline’s daughter to the protest, for which Micheline is upset. Yannick decides to go back to Haiti. Maximus leaves Gerald, but the viewer does not know where he is going. Ronald and Vitas storyline is not resolved. The viewer intentionally does not get closure, as the pain lives on within the characters. As Benoit notes in an interview about Stones in the Sun, “there’s sort of that initial trauma that sends people out of their countries of origin and I wanted to look how that traume, the pain of that trauma, sort of radiates in small and large ways and how it affects people in their intimate lives”. The effects of trauma often do not get cleanly resolved.
References
Benoit, Patricia. “The Invisible Wounds of Exile: Stones in the Sun Haitian Director Patricia Benoît: Intvu.” YouTube, 17 February 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMI_eYdfzFM.