Islam

Timbuktu (2014)

André Crous

Splendid film about oppression in historic city occupied by Islamic radicals draws us in with its multifaceted view of humanity.

timbuktuFrance/Mauritania
4*

Director:
Abderrahmane Sissako 
Screenwriters:
Abderrahmane Sissako 
Kessen Tall
Director of Photography:
Sofian El Fani

Running time: 95 minutes

Born in Mauritania and raised in Mali, Abderrahmane Sissako has set his last two films in the latter, their respective titles referring directly to the country’s two most famous cities. His thoroughly engaging Bamako literally put the World Bank on trial, and Timbuktu examines life under the Islamists who controlled the famed city with its mud buildings for a few months during the Northern Mali conflict in 2012.

Timbuktu was actually shot in Mauritania, and we don’t get a coherent impression of the city in the film, but rather snapshots of characters at various places, mostly inside their homes, under their tents, at the lake where they fish and on the plains where their cattle graze. We don’t know at what point in time the film is set, but what is clear is that the self-installed Islamist overlords are not welcome in the city.

The opening shot is a memorable one. A gazelle is running in total silence, faster and faster, seemingly gracefully, until we hear the rat-a-tat of machine guns. The men in pursuit on the back of a Land Rover are Islamic extremists, whose demands include that Sharia law be carried out, meaning – as we see in the next shot, when wood carvings are shot to pieces – traditional culture or any form of idolatry is rejected. Music is also forbidden, and people have to start covering themselves. Men have to pull their socks up, and women have to wear gloves. The latter demand leads to a bitter confrontation between a strong-willed fishmonger, already fed up with having to wear a veil, who points out the absurdity of her having to handle fish with gloves on.

Such scenes of tension are essential to making this film and its topic accessible, especially to a Western audience. We naturally side with the women who resist the oppression by the all-male ultra-orthodox wing of Islam, who see no contradiction in using Western-made automobiles, mobile phones and video cameras while condemning the sin that is the West and all its works. The hypocrisy of the movement is exemplified by a character called Abdelkrim, who doesn’t only smoke, albeit behind a tree where he is not in the company of his fellow jihadis, but also openly covets a married woman.

Every scene that makes the sham and the friction within the movement visible is wonderful because it gives the audience a real sense of life’s many facets and demonstrates how the director is not interested in presenting the Islamists as a unified block of identical individuals. Unfortunately, Sissako does not do a very good job of introducing his characters to the audience, and it takes us nearly half the film to learn one of the main characters is called Kidane. Living a modest life with his wife, Satima, and their daughter, Toya, he is proud of his eight cows and has a young boy, Issan, look after them during the day.

But the cows are not acting in lockstep either, and when the pride of the drove, humorously called GPS, veers off-course and into the nets of a local fisherman, Kidane’s life takes an unexpected turn that shows just how fragile the peace is in this seemingly laid-back community.

Elsewhere in Timbuktu, a group of young people are arrested and tried when they get caught late at night singing songs together in the privacy of a house, the same way hundreds of thousands of other youngsters their age in other parts of the world spend their evenings.

Many of these scenes have powerful conclusions, sometimes admittedly verging on the melodramatic, but Sissako is very adept at striking a consistent tone in his story. He uses the nuances of the events and our natural attachment to very likeable (mostly female) characters to bring us along on a ride that has many a tragic undertone.

The images are some of the most beautiful in African cinema but never overwhelm our experience and understanding of the narrative. On the contrary, as can be seen in a key scene that takes place at a lake, what starts out as a gorgeous depiction of nature sometimes ends with a startling reminder that man’s impact on nature can be devastating.

Far from being activist or anti-Muslim, Timbuktu shows the strife ordinary, God-fearing people are facing because of a handful of self-righteous individuals who cannot even live by their own rules but insist on carrying out their interpretation of Allah’s regulations on a society that was functioning very well before they came along and ruined it all.

Viewed at the 2014 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival

Wadjda (2013)

André Crous

Saudi Arabia’s first film directed by a woman, and one of its first feature films ever, steals our hearts with a determined teenage girl in the lead.

wadjdaSaudi Arabia/Germany
4.5*

Director:
Haifa al-Mansour
Screenwriter:
Haifa al-Mansour
Director of Photography:
Lutz Reitemeier

Running time: 100 minutes

Original title: وجدة

Finely balancing Western entertainment (a young girl in Saudi Arabia pursues her dreams in her conservative country, which basically amounts to an unconscious act of women’s liberation) with respect for the country’s traditional view of men and women, director Haifa al-Mansour has crafted a film that is sure to generate a lot of discussion abroad and at home.

Wadjda, which is also the name of the 12-year-old main character (played by Waad Mohammed), is a feel-good movie that doesn’t try to sugarcoat the reality of the restrictive environment for women in Saudi Arabia. And yet, even though women clearly have fewer rights than the men, the young Wadjda stands out not because of a deliberate activist streak but because of her very simple desire to speak truth whenever she is asked about her dreams.

Everything comes back to a bicycle, which Wadjda wants to ride – an act that is frowned upon in her society and her parents expressly forbid her to pursue. The reasoning goes the same as recent discussions about women driving in Saudi Arabia: It would allegedly render them infertile because they would be doing something that only men have been doing. Even Wadjda’s mother, who is not unintelligent, believes this drivel, and when she catches Wadjda riding a bike, she is convinced her daughter has damaged herself and her reputation by somehow losing her virginity in the process.

It is no coincidence that the mother has Wadjda’s virginity on her mind because she herself is now infertile after having had only one child. Wadjda’s father is unimpressed and is looking elsewhere for a second wife who can produce a son for him. The liberty granted by society to the men is easy to notice, as we recognise in a rather shocking scene when men are working on a roof overlooking the girls’ school that Wadjda attends, and it is up to the girls to go into hiding lest they be seen by (and therefore excite) the men, who usually only get to see the faces of the women in their own family.

Our insight into Wadjda’s state of mind regarding the bike doesn’t go as far as grasping whether she is entirely aware of the social resistance she is facing or simply decides to ignore others’ objections, but the important thing is that her determination comes across as courageous, because we know what she is up against.

The story, although rather simple, does provide a glimpse of burgeoning teenage sexuality, as Wadjda’s friendship and playful rivalry with a boy, Abdullah, makes clear: Her main goal in getting the bike for herself is so that she can race him and prove that she is actually just as good, if not better, than him. During the film, we get a firm impression that the young Abdullah is rather infatuated with Wadjda, and this relationship is a wondrous thing in a film where we see Salma, one of Wadjda’s classmates (also around 12 years of age), getting married off to an adult and Wadjda’s own mother rejected by her father because he now deems her reproductive organs useless to him.

The film does, however, have a wide array of characters, and besides Abdullah, the man who runs the toy shop that sells the bike that Wadjda yearns for is also a very important addition to the narrative, as he adds complexity to our perception of the Saudi population. Wadjda touches on a host of topics, including the pariah status that two girls incur when they seem to grow too close to each other, as well as the blatant lasciviousness expressed by adult males towards young girls.

Wadjda may be victimised by the men and even by her school principal, but she never plays the victim; on the contrary, we find her likeable because she reacts with the comebacks we want her to have, taking others to task for their hypocrisy and telling the truth when she feels passionate about her position. To make money to buy the bike, she also engages in some less than honest business, but we are on her side because she is not hurting anyone. And a very important scene in which she discovers a stash of money but doesn’t take any of it because it’s not hers affirms her good intentions and makes us admire her even more.

Wadjda is a strong character who clings to the truth and shows her mettle and her determination by taking part in a religious competition, and she may very well be one of the most likeable child characters to be onscreen in a very long time, making the film a true joy to watch.

When Saudis will be able to see the film, however, is still an open question, as the country barely has any movie theatres, and people get most of their silver-screen entertainment beamed in from abroad.

Viewed at the International Film Festival Bratislava 2013

Horses of God (2012)

André Crous

Les chevaux de dieuMorocco
3.5*

Director:
Nabil Ayouch
Screenwriter:
Jamal Belmahi
Director of Photography:
Hichame Alaouie

Running time: 115 minutes

Original title (French): Les chevaux de Dieu
Original title (Arabic): يا خيل الله‎
Transliterated Arabic title: Ya khail allah

Horses of God, a tale of two best friends who grow up in the slums of Casablanca and eventually escape a life of poverty at great cost, is one that is entirely true, and it offers us a glimpse into the lives of a few men from one neighbourhood who would turn to terrorism to give their lives a sense of direction.

Multiple explosions rocked Morocco’s largest city on May 16, 2003, when suicide bombers wreaked havoc in the city centre, setting off their bombs nearly simultaneously in restaurants frequented by non-Muslims (or apostates, according to them, because they are Muslims mixing with people from other religions). Although the reasons for their actions are not entirely clear, there is enough evidence to support at least a loose connection to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq following the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and the general sentiment in the Muslim world that the invasions were an attack on a religion rather than a search for so-called terrorists.

Horses of God does an excellent job of depicting the living conditions of the eventual killers. All of them hail from a squatter camp on the outskirts of Casablanca called Sidi Moumen where, even at a young age, life for everyone seems destined to go nowhere, except through brute force. In the opening scene, we meet a boy who calls himself Yashin, after the sportsman he wishes to emulate, the Soviet-era goalkeeper Lev Yashin. His real name is Tarek, and he spends most of his time with his only friend, Nabil. Tarek’s brother, Hamid, is slightly older but full of anger and criminal ambition, and he protects his brother whenever he can by using a chain he carries with him.

But despite Hamid’s aggressive nature, we quickly realise he cares both for his brother and for his place in the family, as he tells his brother not to follow him into the underworld of crime, as he wants to be sure Tarek would take care of his mother if something ever happened to him. Sooner or later, something does happen to Hamid, and when he comes back, many years later, he is calm, accommodating and noticeably more religious.

As a child, he had admonished his brother about his relationship with Nabil by telling him not to “follow [Nabil] around like a monkey.” The importance of these words cannot be overstated, as they are key to our understanding of the events in the last act of the film, and in particular Hamid’s attitude toward his brother’s fast-growing fanaticism. This brand of religious activism, sponsored by an imam with a soothing voice, attracts Tarek because he had been disoriented and unmoored and had little to give his life much meaning (the storyline of the migrant worker Wasim who becomes a suicide bomber in Syriana is equally compelling without eliciting empathy). Tarek had always been the brunt of others’ jokes and actions, and Islam offered him a path on which to walk with others and feel like he had strong support.

Another very significant line is spoken late in the film by Fouad, the brother of Tarek’s love interest Ghislaine, whom he adores but whose attention he always shrinks from out of timidity or fear, contrary to his later views of life (“Whoever fears Allah will not fear any man,” he says). Fouad, who is around the age of 18, is driven through the city towards an area in the mountains where he and his friends will train, when he says, “It’ll be my first time in the city.”

These words should punch us in the gut, as we realise what a complete bubble of isolation these boys have inhabited all their lives in the slums, and the actions they are about to take all spring from the knowledge they have gained without experiencing the real world, and yet they are on the verge of invading that world and blowing it to pieces for completely selfish reasons: to be martyrs and go through the gates of heaven where “hundreds, thousands of Ghislaines” are waiting for them.

But while the depiction of the socio-economic crisis in which all these men find themselves is accomplished, and the cinematography is highly commendable, especially thanks to a sprinkling of breathtaking shots obtained through the use of a Flying Cam that zips across the shantytown as it pursues a particular character, the main character Tarek lacks the depth and expressiveness that would at least interest us in his personal development.

The film is notable not only for its representation of complex reasoning behind the decision to become a martyr in the name of a religion but also for its treatment of some very thorny issues in the Muslim world. It is surprising to see scenes in which the consumption of alcohol is shown to be widespread, and in a hair-raising scene early on, a moment of child-on-child rape is reminiscent of the equally harrowing scene in the 1981 Brazilian film Pixote. At another point in the film, the teenage Nabil looks in a mirror and tries on his mother’s lipstick. The camera doesn’t linger on him, and we don’t get any further explanation, but this sole indication that he has some gender issues, whatever the reason, is a fascinating revelation in an Arabic-language film.

Such scenes enrich the context of the boys’ living environment and go some way towards explaining, or at least illuminating, their reasons for choosing to turn their lives around by blowing themselves up. In this respect, however, it is not the trajectory of Tarek but of his older brother Hamid that is the most interesting, as he shows real self-doubt. Perhaps it is because he is more wise, having experienced much more hardship and dealt with more people in his time. By contrast, Tarek is always serious, never smiles and doesn’t get much of our empathy.

Director Nabil Ayouch’s use of the camera to tell his story is exceptional without it stealing the show, and his development of Hamid’s character is strong and credible. His film also breaks a number of taboos in a way that never has the look of sensationalism, and despite the desperate nature of life in Sidi Moumen, the universal aspects of family, survival and respect ensure the tale is at times very touching, even though we never empathize with the terrorists’ goals.