Timbuktu

Review

Timbuktu is a 2014 Mauritanian movie directed and co-written by Abderrahmane Sissako. The main character is Kidane who is a herdsman. The movie is centered around the occupation of Mali by Islamic Militia and the struggles the innocent community people had to endure.

Abderrahmane did a fantastic job in crafting the story. This movie explores the fate of Herdsman living in an Islamic militia occupied community. Though Kidane and his family lives on the outskirts where they are a bit out of the way for the extremist, one of his cattle ran into a fisherman’s net, got killed and what follows is a must watch piece. They will kill adulterers by stoning, lash people for playing music or singing, force young kids to abandon soccer.

About 90% of the supposed stereotypes you will hear about Islamic extremists were well executed in this movie. Just a side note, there is no mention of (rjam) death by stoning in the highest law in Islam - the Qu’ran - so watch this movie with a third eye. An anonymous reviewer on IMDb said the woman should have been buried up to only waist level, where he got that from I have no idea. First it sounded like he was trying to be funny but I guess he might not.

One huge more secular scene most people can relate even if they are not creating content is the scene where the militants were trying to film a propaganda but couldn’t articulate their thoughts. First I thought yeah this is normal for most people but then I thought again about it and came up with the conclusion that they are fumbling and struggling to articulate their thoughts not only because of fear of public speaking but also because they realized their strict interpretation of Islam doesn’t make sense and can’t be well articulated.

All the little details that I bet most Western viewers won’t pick up, my African lens came to play. Collisions of different farmers involving animals and crops (fish in this movie) hit different if you have experienced it before. The concept of asking another family for a girl's hand in marriage (in my culture, the bride doesn’t go himself as shown in this movie, only elders) I thought was quite spot on, though disturbing at the end. Translator speaks horribly broken English - spectacular acting I thought - I can heavily relate. The light work was great I think, dusk, dunes, sun sets and even indoors. Especially indoors, it looked so real, no over or under lightning.

One thing not so obvious in the movie is that, I think the director was trying to tell audiences that the community was already Islamic before the arrival of the extremist. So maybe he killed the stereotype that Islam is spread by the sword but reinforced that Islamic extremists aren’t great to live with. Both aren’t so desirable anyways.

And talk about sound? Monahla Dargis of The New York Times said “A mesmerizing mix of mood and tone”, I thought the sound work and music in the movie was more than mesmerizing. The last time I heard music with such depth and height was at some in my hometown about a decade ago. A helpless, abused crying woman with such soothing voice sung in tears, I became helpless as well and fell for the sound.

In general it was a fantastic story and structure for such a movie, but at the end I was confused with the role of the bike rider. Of course not everything is going to be well understood on a first watch so I let that slide.

The Movie Timbuktu got a 7.1 out of 10 on IMDb but I will give it a straight 5 star, it’s certainly one of the better movies I have seen recently. Well done!