Timbuktu - ‘beautiful, human and haunting all at once’

The fifth film from Abderrahmane Sissako is an impactful look at the brief 2012 Islamist occupation of the iconic Malian city of the title. At times brutal, at others comedic, this film plays somewhat like an African ‘Four Lions’ (Morris, 2010) for its first half, humanising the terrorists through documenting their gaff-prone attempts to force the residents of Timbuktu toward their fascist worldview. With a virtually total non-diagetic soundtrack until around the one hour mark, the film plays out with an almost documentary feel as it chronicles the Islamists’ relations with the townspeople. When modern technology and ideology clashes with an ancient way of life, the results are equally humorous and disconcerting. Highlights include a stubborn woman refusing to wear gloves in the marketplace and demanding the militia arrest her – “How can I chop fish with gloves on? I’m fed up!” – and the local, moderate Imam extracting a chilling confession from the Islamist leader as to why a local teenager is being forced to marry one of his soldiers. His calm explanation will be deeply troubling for Western audiences, yet goes a long way to showing why the fight against militant Islam cannot be won with weapons alone. The all too brief moments in the mosque, where the two radically different interpretations of Islam come into contact, are some of the most fascinating in the film.

Sissako lulls his audience in with twin narratives; on the one hand the slapstick efforts of the Islamists to take control, and on the other a tale of enduring, loving familial bonds that blossom under the canvas of desert tent. The herder Kidane spends his days drinking coffee and exchanging pleasantries with his wife in this nomadic setting, while his adopted son tends the cows and his daughter sews and learns basic arithmetic. Yet the shadow of a threat looms over all this in the form of a brief, inconsequential visit from the Islamists. Even in the desert one can be reached, it would seem. And so it proves to be, as the second half descends into increasingly darker territory. Shocking highlights here include a vicious stoning of two adulterers and the arrest of a small group who dared to play music in their house; a crime under the new regime. The human face given to the extremists in the first half of the film makes their increasingly totalitarian behaviour all the more oppressive to witness once it’s begun in earnest.

The nearest thing the film has to a coherent narrative is Kidane’s blunt, misguided attempt to achieve recompense for a slaughtered cow, and the judicial fall out from his bungling attempt to administer personal justice. His aggression against the local fisherman has horrific results for him and his family, and exposes the flaws in the idyllic existence his family enjoy. This theme runs throughout the film – Sissako does not present a black and white viewpoint of noble peasants resisting nasty terrorists, instead conveying a picture of confused people all trying to live their lives in the best way they see fit. The Islamists sneak away for cigarettes and allow the local prostitute-cum-psychic wander around with impunity. Following their ban of the sport, they are powerless to prevent the locals playing a game of football with an invisible ball – the stand out scene of the film, both surreal and relatable, executed with an almost balletic grace by the players while the militia circle on an old motorbike, menacing yet toothless.

Sofian El Fani’s cinematography brings coherence to the desert landscape, lighting everything in the sheen of the African sunset, particularly when reflected off the calm waters of the lake near Kidane’s tent. Beautiful, human and haunting all at once, this is a must see film of the current Awards Season.