Moolaade

In the words of Rodger Ebert “ Sometimes I seek the right words and I despaired.” No other line rings more true than such when relating to the subject matter for the 2004 film, Moolaade. Brougt to light by Ousmane Sembene, a man who is critically referred to as the father of African film and Co-ventured by eight other countries, it would be easy to confuse this piece with a light hearted flick at first glance. The acoustics bend the viewer’s ear towards the sounds of Burkina Faso and bring our eyes to the brightly colored scenery of the small village where Sembene searched diligently for months to find.

Moolaade is a film about protection, change, desire and tradition. It is about the “Purification” ritual within this community in Africa. A pyramid power struggle rises up in the community between the men and women, family units and elders. This only prolongs the terrifying and potentially lethal question and process looking over the heads over those who would seek solace to avoid it.

Colle (Fatoumata Coulibaly) is the second wife of twice as many, wed to a powerful and highly respected man. She had refused to involve their own daughter in the purification which had long since rendered her undesirable and unsuitable to wed. The status of being taboo jeopardizes Amsatou’s (Salimata Traore), engagement to a hep and modernized man who is set to inherit the highest standing in the village. She turns her back on tradition, resists the cohesion of the community, her family- even endures a public beating by her husband. She takes it all to spare these young girls from the time honored practice of genital cutting. She is stubborn. She is strong. She is the superhero. Adorned on Colle’s chin is a tattoo which extends from her inner gum to the bottom of her chin. She is a rare woman, and none other sports this.

When it becomes time for another group of girls to become purified and cut, six of them escape. Knowing her history with the process four flee to Collie’s residence and beg for refuge. She grants them Moolaade, a protective spell which can not be undone nor denied until she herself does the taking back. The power struggle soon follows as word spreads she has granted these girls protection and is keeping them from the cutting ceremony. The elders, in their infinite wisdom, send out an order that all radios must be removed from the women’s custody. Modern ideas.

Female genital mutilation is a common practice in Africa, Egypt, Somalia and many other countries. And while reasons and techniques vary, Moolaade focus on religious connotations towards the act. There are many botched jobs and impoverished families perform the ritual with rusty knives and rocks, but still it goes on. The film never states what type of cutting is carried out here (infibulation or clitoraldectomy) but we do get a sense of alterations done to the genital. The night Collie’s husband returns home from long trip away they bed together. The ‘surgery’ not only removes pleasurable sensation during sex from the women who receive it but also makes it excruciatingly painful. After being ripped open at her purified surgical site Collie’s third wife comes to her aide. Still, up until this point even the women support this process.

This was Sembene’s last film at the age of 93. As his last work it comes to speak volumes. In an interview with Bonnie Greer in 2005 ( link below) he expressed his wish for the telling of this culture’s struggles, by this culture and his hope to do it justice. The film presents this harsh and controversial subject matter in a subtle and slow approaching way. For me, the impact lingers long past the credits.





Ousmane Sembène at Sundance



http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2005/jun/05/features

Hunger

The basic unit of measurements in a film is weighed out in shots, or clips. Cut from a slightly longer version to the finished product to yield around five to six seconds each, there are thousands of shots in every movie you view. Just as a minute is comprised of 60 seconds, the average time length for holding any single pose rarely lasts beyond this time frame. As we view a film the shots bounce round constantly from scene to scene so that we may experience the reactions of those around the camera from all angles, without actually being there. Being trained from infancy to accept this it seems slightly absurd to question the logic of the sequence or to break it down as such.

Hunger (2008 Steve McQueen) is comprised of three sections, the second of which is 20 minute medium shot which is played out straight through by main character’s Michael Fassbender and Rory Mullen. This kind of a shot was chosen artfully by director Steve McQueen to give you a taste of the solitude, the ambiance and the growing dramatic dialogue between these two at this time. The majority of clips aren’t shot past the 30 second mark, so for one 40 times this length is no small feat. The remaining few minutes of this section is shot in an eye-level close up, while Bobby Sands (Fassbender) recounts a relatable story from his childhood to the Priest (Mullen), to capture the intensity and reminiscence being conveyed.

This film is highly political, centered near Belfast in 81’s and documents the imprisonment of Irish republican prisoners as they make their way through the system. We are subject to the viewing of police in riot gear beating the absolute shit out of those in the institution, regular anal and oral checks, and the crafty ways inmates smuggle items in through different bodily orifices during visitation.

 On the flip side of that we also see a side of the war as viewed by the guards, one in particular named officer Raymond Lohan (played by Stuart Graham. We first meet him at home while dressing for his day at work. He wakes, has breakfast with his wife and checks his car for a bomb. Everything he does is in paled out colors and everywhere he goes is in silence when compared to the activity of the job and the outside world. His marriage suffers, he suffers, and everyone is suffering. There is no part of what he does that is allowed to stay at work without him.

Riddled with unabashed violence scattered all throughout, Hunger is not for the faint of heart.  The highlights being the director’s capacity to play up the acoustics from one scene to another and transition beautifully from sequence to sequence. This is a terrifyingly beautiful picture and never have I been more engrossed, turned off or disheartened while viewing something in my life. I would highly recommend it.

Unique twenty minute shot inside the prison walls.

Before the Rain

Most generally, Films are shot in linear form since that is what the viewer’s find most comfortable with. It is easy to accept, follow and agree with after all that is how we live our lives. There is no going backwards and the only way out is through it. Every once in a while a film will come along that not only defies this logic but plays leap frog around it. We can see examples of this sort of work by writer and director Quienton Taranitno in several of his movies and in Christopher Nolan’s 2002 film Momento.

In 1994, Milcho Manchevski wrote and directed another piece of work which mirrors this sort of chopped logic titled Before the Rains. The plot is a lemniscate of three intertwining lives twisted together from across the globe. Very political in its nature, you can never tell where the story actually kicks off at or where it ends. Perhaps that is the point the director is trying to get across.

This film lays down roots in the Republic of Macedonia during war time, Albania and London. It is sectioned up in to three parts “Words, Faces and Pictures”. The opening scene (Words) is at a Macedonian monastery with resident monk Kiril (played by Gregoire Colin) who has made good on his  vow of silence over the past two years but whom, but a series of unfortunate happenings, ends up in places he wouldn’t expect. He leaves the monetary, or is kicked out it is never clear due to harboring a young Albanian girl named Zamira (Labina Mitevska). One scene in this section in which the children of the village are playing with a turtle is particularly harrowing. They surround him with rocks, sticks and eventually fire. They throw bullets in the fire and all scatter. This being a reflection of the bigger problem, violence infiltrating the land and the UN’s unwillingness to stop it a well as a physical manifestation of the repeating theme : "Time never dies. The circle is not round." Everything is connected.

The next section is aptly titled “Faces” and opens with photographs of contemporary starlets bring you up to date with the times (since one was never established before). This is where we are introduced to the character who steals the most screen time and infiltrate’s the other settings, Aleksandar (played by Rade Serbedzija). We also meet this love interest in London Anne (Katrin Cartlidge). It is in the cab when they first re connect that he announces “A hard rains gunna fall”, namaste Bob Dylan and movie title all in one. You also get the sense that “Words” was recent, since there an obvious tension between those on opposite sides of the war in the restaurant scene. Another clue to the timing is a Beastie Boy’s song being played in Words, Faces and Pictures. Everything is connected.

‘Pictures’ is where the most of the questions which have been kicked up over the past hour and a half are answered or satisfied to a point. Aleksandar returns to his home for the first time in 16 years to a disheveled town where everything has changed, to this understanding. It is here he defies the new order that the villagers have gotten used to, and saves the life of Zamira, which eventually causes his death at the hands of his cousin. Everything is Connected.

There are some continuity issues that can be covered up with the whole time sketch explanation. Such as, how Anne got photos of Zimira, but it is this type of circular reasoning that is the overall theme of Before the Rain. There is also a constant lack of communication which drives the death and destruction available in each section of this war torn work.

Writer & director Milcho Manchevski.

Throughout my life I have been disappointed, saddened and let down. When movies based on books hit the big screen I hold my breath and make a leap of faith as to whether or not it could live up to what my imagination has produced while reading the original works. But of course it does not. What director can compete with the overactive imagination of its consumers? Then again, I may just be sore from The Indian in the cupboard (Frank Oz, 1995). There are many great writers in this world and once a book had been transformed in to one unified motion picture for the masses, it’s anyone’s guess whether it will become a hit or fall flat.

The best book to movie transformation I have experienced (which has made it one of my favorite films) is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by director Terry Gilliam in 1998. Which is based off the autobiographical novel by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson from 1972. Call me a traditionalist, but you can literally follow each line of this movie off the pages book like it is a script. I first discovered this spectacle of human lunacy while unfamiliar with the writer’s works, when I was in middle school. Three other attempts have been made to turn book to the big screen, including Art Lison’s 1980 version, Where the Buffalo roam, starring Bill Murray.

The film follows Thompson’s character, journalist Raoul Duke (played by Johnny Depp) throughout his many adventures in search of a story whilst he abandons deadlines, laws and public decency. Assisting him on this trip is his attorney and partner in crime, Oscar Zeta Ocasta’s character Dr. Gonzo (played by Binicio del Toro). The setting is primarily in Nevada, as the title indicates, in the 70’s. As you would expect from a film set in this time there is still a of heat coming from the 60’s with undertones political and human rights movements carrying favor throughout, as you watch. This is highlighted in the movies halfway mark in what Thompson called “The wave speech”. This isn’t a surprising theme considering the writers political affiliation in real life during that time period.

Equally important to the plot are the drug induced occurrences that spin Duke out in to places he hadn’t accounted for, but is always seemingly ready to react with. He is forever pushing it as far as he can go, in search of the American Dream. You also get a sense of his writing style though Duke’s language, narrative skills and work completed throughout the film. Aptly coined Gonzo journalism, Thompson considered this trip to be less than successful when it came to documentation purposes. This favors style over fact and can be reduced to this description by the writer “the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism — and the best journalists have always known this".

 Also in this movie is a seemingly unrecognizable Toby McGuire, who is wearing a shirt with Nazi mouse on it (the original cover of the book). A lit up Christina Ricci, and a cameo by Hunter S. Thompson himself, who worked closely in the production of this film.

Pictured below is work by the Novels  illustrator Ralph Steadman titled 'The Savage Journey'.

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Concept?

Howdy everyone and thanks for reading. This is going to be a primarily film based blog specializing in international films and how they reflect political and interpersonal relationships specific to the area. If you’ns want to read other words and thoughts and things, I’ve a TypePad site under the name Kathlena Barren.

The first post will be about the 1940 version of Fantasia (another word for fancy) conducted by Stokowski, and will be up in a few days followed by one about Krzystof Kieslowski's film, Blue.