The video below makes me want to only eat fresh produce, but then that’s all gone to shit too. Spraying tomatoes with chemicals so they’ll be nice and red? Yes, old news, but still scary. So what am I going to eat now, mom? Food from my own garden? Yeah right, the little strip of soil next to my 3-family building is so filled with glass and who-knows-what I’ll die from eating food that local too. It’s time to move to a commune, friends.

“War/Dance,” a visually ravishing documentary that follows a group of schoolchildren from a refugee camp in northern Uganda to a national music competition, raises a fundamental issue for filmmakers confronting unimaginable suffering in war-torn African countries.

To what degree should human savagery be softened, sweetened and presented in a spirit of hope to make it palatable to a movie audience? Every shot in “War/Dance,” much of which was filmed in the Patongo refugee camp in northern Uganda, has the polish of a richly hued, impeccably composed illustration. You wonder why the filmmakers felt obliged to shoehorn so many pretty sunsets into the film, which appears to be admiring itself in a mirror.

Having voiced these qualms, let me say that “War/Dance,” in spite of its slickness, is an honorable, sometimes inspiring exploration of the primal healing power of music and dance in an African tribal culture.