The Price of Sugar

A spoonful of sugar may help the medicine go down, but as conveyed in this competently crafted human-rights doc, it also contributes to the exploitation of Haitian laborers in the Dominican Republic. Narrated by Paul Newman, the film introduces viewers to the country’s sugarcane slums via Father Christopher Hartley, a Spanish-born British aristocrat and priest-activist who’s hell-bent on improving the lives of illegal Haitian immigrants forced to live in squalor under the dominion of the all-powerful sugar conglomerate Grupo Vicini. The situation is undeniably horrible, but director Bill Haney’s hagiographic portrait of Hartley and his repeated images of malnourished children leave a saccharine aftertaste.