Because there are so few films from Africa that make it to U.S. distribution, it’s always something of an event when a new African film opens. But “Bamako” is unusual even by these standards.
The film comes from one of Africa’s most interesting filmmakers, Abderrahmane Sissako, who hails from Mali. Dubbed an “emerging master” by the 2007 Seattle International Film Festival, Sissako previously scored with his impressionistic films “Life on Earth” and “Waiting for Happiness.”
Those movies showed that Sissako was less interested in story than in creating a strong, lyrical sense of place. They displayed a wry sense of humor about the way the modern world has settled into rural African life.
“Bamako,” however, changes the rules. Here Sissako takes an overtly political turn, with touches of the fantastic.
Most of the movie is set in a courtyard, surrounded by ordinary houses in Bamako, Mali. It seems that in this spot, Africa itself is holding a trial: a trial accusing the World Bank (and by implication, the West) of damaging the continent and its people.
Such a trial could never really exist and, if it did, it wouldn’t happen in a small courtyard. But here are the judges in their robes, some European, some African, and here are the prosecutors and defense attorneys – and the witnesses to attest to the difficulties of life in 21st-century Africa.
Some of these people are actual lawyers, judges, villagers, and apparently were encouraged to improvise their own ideas on the subject. Adding to the sense of realism – even if the set-up itself is impossible – the location for the filming is the courtyard of Sissako’s own family home.
As though the premise weren’t unusual enough, Sissako adds a movie trailer in the middle of “Bamako,” for a Western (starring Danny Glover, one of this film’s executive producers). The viewer can decide how much of this is a joke about colonialism intruding on Third World countries.
The arguments in the movie will be familiar to anybody versed in the subject of globalization, and at times the movie goes flat with its blunt approach. But Sissako’s crowning touch is including the sense of life continuing around the trial: People come and go, doing their washing or bringing food home. As the title of his previous film had it, waiting for happiness.
A scene from “Bamako.”
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