Timbuktu

One of the best things about watching films or reading books is that one is taken to places one would ordinarily never go. I mention this in connection to Timbuktu because I've been hearing the name of the city called Timbuktu since I was a small child, as I would imagine most people have, because it has become a metaphor for a faraway, hard-to-reach place: "From here to Timbuktu." But I'm not sure I could have found it on a map, and indeed some people will answer that it doesn't exist.

But it does exist. It is a city in the country of Mali, and has been famous for centuries because it was a center of trade. But in Abderrahmane Sissako's film Timbuktu, it appears to be a sleepy and sandy but murderous village while it was occupied by the Islamofascist group Ansar Dine.

The film, which was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Oscar (representing the country of Mauritania), begins slowly, and it took me a while to sort of who was who and what their relationship was. It starts with the new jihadist leaders taking a bullhorn in the streets and announcing that smoking and music are forbidden, and women must wear socks and gloves.

Meanwhile, a farmer who owns cattle and goats, Kadane, lives out in the country with his wife and daughter. They are not much for the new rules--when she is visited by one of the functionaries of the new regime he tells her to cover her head. She tells him if he doesn't like it, to look the other way. These guys carry around machine guns, but they're not quite use to being in power, and often look ashamed. In an interview, Sissako mentioned that he wanted to show how one's neighbors can become, in one day, one's hangmen.

The central plot concerns a dispute between Kadane and a local fishermen. When one of his cow's gets caught in the fishermen's net, the fisherman kills the cow. Of course this is a great disaster for Kadane, and a somewhat predictable course ensues, but it plays out powerfully in Sissako's simple yet forceful style. After an act of violence, we see, in an extreme long shot, the living person walking across the shallow river as the sun sets.

Another very powerful, almost hallucinatory scene is boys playing soccer--but without the ball. Soccer has been banned, but the boys mime a game anyway, stopping to do calisthenics when authorities come by.

This is just one of many beautiful shots in the film, photographed by Sofian El Fani. At times it looks like a National Geographic special, but at other times, such as in a long interrogation scene, the camera makes few moves, allowing the full force of the scene to play out. Sissako has great skill, and I will be looking to see more of his films.

Timbuktu is a film that will stick with me, and no longer will I hear that phrase about how far away it is without thinking of it.