Butler's Cinema Scene

Tool Kiki, Ibrahim Ahmed and Layla Walet Mohamed as “Timbuktu’s”  “holy family”

“TIMBUKTU”  My rating: B+ 

97 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Superficially “Timbuktu” resembles one of those old WWII dramas about the Nazi occupation of a peaceful village.

The difference is that the occupiers in “Timbuktu” are the gunmen of ISIS, and that writer/director Abderrahmane Sissako eschews propaganda for an insightful and thoroughly humane study of both the oppressors and the oppressed.

“Timbuktu”  is a Mauritanian film that  was a nominee this year for best foreign language Oscar (and which cleaned up at this year’s Cesar Awards). It is set in a desert region of Mali,  which shares a border with Mauritania in northwest Africa.

It opens with gorgeous footage of a gazelle bounding across an arid landscape. The animal is being chased by a truck flying the black flag of ISIS while passengers fire their guns — a stark example of natural simplicity compromised by human cruelty.

Abel Jafri (right) as the ISIS leader

This is followed by a scene of beautiful wooden tribal effigy figures being used for target practice.

ISIS fighters go through a village (the buff-colored buildings are reminiscent of the pueblo architecture of the American Southwest), using a bullhorn to announce the rules of the occupation: Music is forbidden. Smoking is forbidden. All women must cover their heads and wear socks and gloves.

Sissako and co-writer Kessen Tall don’t provide one through story. Rather, they give us moments from daily life as experienced by numerous characters.

One story line centers on the nomadic herdsman Kidane (Ibrahim Ahmed), who lives in a tent with his beautiful wife Satima (Toulou Kiki) and their daughter Toya (Layla Walet Mohamed). Despite a few modern conveniences like cell phones, Kidane’s family are at peace with their environment, basking in life’s simple pleasures. (They remind of Bergman’s “holy family” of actors in “The Seventh Seal.”)

But their little Eden won’t last.  The local ISIS leader, Abdelkerim (Abel Jafri), covets Satima. And Kidane’s dispute with a neighbor will have tragic repercussions.

Zabou (Kettly Noel) is wildly eccentric.  She dresses flamboyantly, sashays when she walks, and hurls insults at the armed visitors. The ISIS members don’t know what to do with her…she may be mad, which means they cannot punish her.

Kettly Noel as the madwoman

A young woman arrested for creating music with her family in the privacy of their home is sentenced to 80 lashes.  As the sentence is carried out she sings through her tears.

Now that ISIS has banned soccer, the local boys stage an entire match using an imaginary ball.

And  though they cannot play the sport, young ISIS fighters debate the strengths and weaknesses of various World Cup teams with the insight of dedicated fans.

Throughout Sissako and cinematographer Sofian El Fani (he also lensed the controversial “Blue is the Warmest Color”) aim for a balance between epic landscape and the human face.

There is a superb long shot of a murder taken from a distance of hundreds of yards. But the camera also moves in so closely that try as we might, we cannot hate the ISIS followers. When you’re this close you can’t help seeing the other guy’s humanity.

That, in fact, may be “Timbuktu’s” greatest achievement — the way it makes us contemplate both the mundane and the murderous in the human heart.

| Robert W. Butler