BY FRED BLOSSER
In
jihadist-occupied Timbuktu, a militiaman climbs off the back of a motorcycle
and, in a daily ritual, uses a megaphone to remind the population about the
mandates of the occupiers’ harsh Sharia law: “Important information! Smoking is forbidden. Music is forbidden. Women must wear socks!†Initially, these scenes in director
Abderrahmane Sissako’s “Timbuktu†(2014) recall the scenes of the PA system
announcing the day’s recreational activities at the 4077th’s field hospital in
Robert Altman’s “MASH†(1970). The
harsh, amplified sound of the delivery system gives the message a heft of
authority. In contrast, the message
itself is absurd, like the logic-twisting quips that one of Groucho Marx’s old
characters would spout. In Altman’s
film, the inane whine of the PA system provided ironic relief from the intense scenes in the
surgical tent. In Sissako’s, the viewer
initially laughs at the nonsensicality of the words, but as the film
illustrates, the jihadist tyranny is nothing to snicker at. Caught singing, a young woman is publicly
punished with 40 lashes. For adultery, a
man and a woman are stoned to death in a particularly horrific way. They are buried in a sand pit up to their
necks, unable to move, and then bystanders batter their unprotected heads with
rocks.
The
invasion depicted by Sissako actually occurred in recent history. Jihadists mobilized by al-Queda and its affiliates seized control of Timbuktu in
2012 and remained in power for a year before Malian and French troops drove
them out. In some ways it was a
forerunner of the present aggression by ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Like the footage we now see every day from
that front on the web and cable news, Sissako dramatizes the heavy hand of
Timbuktu’s oppressors with shots of his gun-wielding militiamen cruising the
ancient streets in open vehicles, black banners flying. A compassionate imam (Adel
Mahmoud Cherif)
challenges the invaders’ dictates. In
one instance, his resistance is successful as an armed patrol barges into his
mosque during prayer, and he orders them to leave. In another, trying to reverse the forcible
marriage of a teenaged girl to a young militiaman, he fails. “It was a legal marriage based on Islamic
law,†the jihadist administrator (Salem Dendou) rules. But there was no guardian at the ceremony to
look after the girl’s interests, the imam contends. “We are the guardians of all deeds since we
arrived in this territory,†the administrator sternly counters.
The
oppression of Sharia law, or its interpretation by the extremists, is
reinforced by the fact that interpreters are needed for communication between
the Arab-speaking invaders and the natives of Timbuktu, who speak mostly French
and Bambara. The crushing weight of
fundamentalist rule also falls heavily on Kidane (Ibrahim
Ahmed dit Pino), a herdsman who has attempted to live apart from the invaders
with his wife, daughter, and tenant in an idyllic desert refuge. Kidane’s story forms the core of the film and
builds to a tragic conclusion, which in Western eyes is likely to be all the
more troubling because of Kidane’s fatalistic acceptance of events (“it is
willedâ€). In an American production,
Dwayne Johnson would have saved the day, or Jamie Foxx as Kidane would have
shot his own way out.
A nominee for the 2015 Academy Award in the Best Foreign Movie
category and for the
Palme d’Or as Best Picture at Cannes, “Timbuktu†looks gorgeous
in the new, hi-def Blu-ray edition released by the Cohen Media Group. Detail is sharp, and the colors of the exotic
tribal clothing worn by Kidane’s wife (Toulou Kiki) and other characters are so
vivid they seem to jump out of the TV screen. Some critics thought the movie was too pretty. However, arguably, Sissako is telling his
story through the eyes of his indigenous characters, and this is the world as
they see it. The Blu-ray disc includes
English subtitles for the multi-lingual dialogue track, and there are two extras:
a theatrical trailer and a thoughtful interview with Sissako at a public
screening of “Timbuktu.â€
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