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February 6, 2005
Moolaadé
I caught Moolaadé (IMDB), the most recent film by Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene, Friday night and found it to be a very impressive film. Moolaadé focuses on the practice of female circumcision in a remote village in Burkina Faso. The film opens with four girls who flee the purification ritual, turning to Collé, a woman in their village known to oppose the practice. Collé offres the girls "moolaadé," a kind of sanctuary that will ensure their protection. Like Roger Ebert, I fear that a rough sketch of the film's plot might discourage viewers from actually seeing Moolaadé, but the film is well worth watching if it happens to make it to your community.
In many ways, Moolaadé is about issues of modernization, with battery-powered radios intersecting with the ancient rituals of the village. The women clearly treasure the radios, seeing it as a lifeline to the world outside their village, but when Collé and several of the other women begin to resist the traditional practices, the men in the community collect the radios, piling them in front of the village's mosque and setting fire to them in a beautifully composed juxtaposition. Collé, one of the more compelling characters I've seen in some time, brings a great deal of pleasure to her resistance (see the Bright Lights Film Jornal review), dancing and singing with the girls she is protecting, though later in the film she is forced to pay dearly for her actions, taking a beating from her husband, who has been coerced by elders in the viallage into enforcing his power over her. Her ability to endure this punishment prevents the film from falling into the trap of pitying the characters.
I think that part of what made the film work for me was Sembene's ability to generate genuine suspense, and until the end of the film, I was uncertain how things would play out (a quality also noted by James Berardinelli). Few of the characters were purely villainous. Even the most traditional characters act primarily out of a fear of change.
I've been having a difficult time reviewing this film, in part, I think, because of my own awareness of my status as a viewer consuming these images of another culture. I'm not sure how to respond to the film's presentation of the crisis between modernization and globalism against the village's traditions, many of which are quite clearly harmful, especially to young girls and women. These contradictions are played out in the character of Mercenaire, a traveling merchant who provides the women with their precious radio batteries, but who also quietly sells condoms and displays posters promoting AIDS awareness. But at the same time, I'm not sure the film delves deeply enough into the harmful consequences of globalization and modernization on these villages.
If any of my other readers have seen the film, I'd love to hear your take. While I really liked the film, I haven't entirely resolved my interpretation of it.
Posted by chuck at February 6, 2005 12:46 PM
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Comments
Your description actually makes me want to see the film quite a bit.
And don't sweat the part about viewing another culture. Cultures want to be seen, and I think it's perfectly reasonable that a film like this might have an educative function alongside what I think would be called its more diegetic function (i.e., the debate/ narrative progression internal to the film). Am I using that word correctly?
Moreover, someone like Ousmane Sembene -- a great filmmaker that very few people in the U.S. have ever heard of -- can use all the publicity he can get.
Posted by: Amardeep at February 7, 2005 9:00 PM
Glad you're interested in seeing the film--it desreves a wider audience. I've appreciated some of Semebne's other films, and because he obviously does not get much attention here, I'm happy to publicize his work.
I think my comments about my status as a viewer derive from my own ambivalence about certain effects of modernization. I also wondered about the intended audience for this film. Was Sembene making the film for African audiences? For European/American audiences? I'm running late, so I cn't quite articulate these questions as well as I would like.
Posted by: Chuck ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://chutry.wordherders.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at February 8, 2005 7:52 AM
I just watched the film tonight at the Cinemanila Film Festival. It was such a treat for me to see into th elives of people in a very remote culture that is very seldomly penetrated by foreign eyes. Being a women's rights activist, the film in its own way can indeed turn on the awareness switch to a certain luminosity. It is actually as if you're watching a more interesting documentation on female genital mutilation.
Some elements in the film are actually quite hackneyed like with the characters, there's the cultured progressive man who comes back to the village from France, that character who lost her daughter due to FGM that lead to the realization of other women of such torture and of course, the group of macho guys who think that they know everything and their machismo is all that matters. Cinematography is simple and I actually think that the roughness molds the film into becoming more realistic; not at all sugar coated for mass popular consumption.
On a range of 1-10 though, 10 being the highest, I'd give the film a 9 though I'm not really sure if it gives justice to that coz my complaint is just mainly on the script, which is of course just translated. I'm sure it would be better understanding it in its original language.
Posted by: MJ at October 29, 2005 1:42 PM