TIMBUKTU DVD

For several years, I lived in rural, arid Senegal near the tri-border with Mali and Mauritania (TIMBUKTU was filmed in Mauritania by a Mauritanian director/screenwriter). I learned an African language and exerted considerable effort in order to learn about cultural traditions, storytelling, etc. My knowledge is still quite limited. Nonetheless, my experience can explain some of the one- and two-star reviews for this film, though those reviews will assuredly align with the preferences for a subset of prospective viewers from the US.(1) Standards for entertainment are different in different parts of the world. On the West African side of the Sahel, stories are not constructed with the sole intention of throwing "plot twists" at viewers to maximize the surprise of the resolution. Rather, storytelling is a medium for sharing moral norms, teaching lessons, and uniting audiences behind a message. In the case of TIMBUKTU, the disruption of normal life from an outside force, disguised as a voice for Islam, invades the routines of rural-dwelling Muslims. The resulting lessons are significant, for a vast majority of the population reasons about morality from an Islamic perspective.(2) Personality types reflect accepted personalities within the dominant culture of an area. Nearly all psychology research in the world builds consensus about personality from experiments conducted on WEIRD subjects--Western, Educated, and from Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic countries. The spectrum of personality types outlined in Western psychology simply does not capture the diversity elsewhere in the world (i.e., not that people aren't either introverts or extroverts, but a framework like the Myers-Briggs means very little in rural Mauritania). Even in real life, old men speak like sages, at times, because that's what's expected. Children are treated as innocents, and commonly perceived as manifestations of the divine in our world. Traditional coupling assumes women are subordinate to their husbands in formal settings, though that status does not mean they are not agents or devoid of influence (e.g., the quiet wisdom of Satima's character). Certainly, iconoclastic personalities exist, but they conform to and break convention in particular ways based on conventions in the place where the iconoclasts have maturated (hard to see within one's own culture, but I would argue iconoclasm follows the same patterns in the US).(3) Similarly to (2), character archetypes originate from media popular in the Sahel, not from Hollywood productions or Western literature.(4) A minority of households have access to a television. Those people who do have access to TV tend to reside in urban landscapes. Thus, acting and directing are still in their infancy in this part of the world. For anyone from the US watching this movie, the acting will seem stilted in the same way that older television from the US does (1950s-1990s). Audiences in the Sahel do not need to forget that they are watching actors pretending to be characters. Acting is approached as performance. We, in the US, are impressed by an actor's ability to wholly become the character; e.g., Daniel Day Lewis. That idea's simply not relevant to most audiences in the Sahel (my observation, however fallible).(5) Reactions to action can be exaggerated. Most people in the rural Sahel will have seen, or participated in, theatrical performances at a village level. This film, in calculated scenes, stays loyal to such localized performances. Facial expressions, posture, and bodily motions reflect phenomena in a way recognizable to all audience members, and there is an art to these culturally embedded mannerisms, akin to traditional Chinese theater or any other canon. As an outsider, one will not necessarily recognize these moments, and the scenes will not elicit the emotional responses that they will for someone from the West African Sahel. I can say, for one, that the translation is not perfect, which also accounts for missed subtlety.TIMBUKTU moves slowly. The story unveils oppression from a fundamentalist ideology that does not share the values or dignity of the local brand of Islam. If one is willing to check Western expectations at the door, TIMBUKTU is worth watching and contemplating.

A stunningly emotional film. Depicts the transition from a peaceful town to one ruled by fundamentalists armed with machine guns and Sharia law. It takes place slowly enough, and the villagers take it in stride in the beginning, with their own religious leaders attempting to teach the fundamentalists to be more lenient, more forgiving, based on their understanding of Islam. But unfortunately, as with many religious texts, you can argue almost any position and find supportive passages, and the fundamentalists have the upper hand as they have anointed themselves as "liberators" of this town. As the fundamentalists increase their strangle hold over the village, and the severity of the punishments they dole out, the village is ripped apart.Beautifully filmed, and considering the subject matter, there is very little bloody violence. But the emotional impact, as portrayed by an absolutely superb cast, and riveting story telling, is very powerful.

There’s a lot of restraint and subtlety in director Abderrahmane Sissako’s tragic delineation of what it’s like to live under an ISIS takeover of a Muslim community. And there’s a beautiful artistry in the way he shows the barbarism of Sharia law so horrifically played out while the subjugation of women is made clear. (Actually the women in the movie stand strong against the subjugation.) Thus the evil of the “jihadists” (ISIS is never named but a black flag is flown) is contrasted with the normal lives of Muslim people.Sissako, who also wrote the script, is careful to make this distinction—a distinction that a good part of the world is currently working on. It is not Muslims who are bad; it is the extremists. Yet I could not help but think as I watched this with the incessant talk of God will’s, etc., that maybe, just maybe, the tribalism of religion itself is at fault. How horrible it is to live with the constant thought and expression that it is all God’s doing (with a little help from the forces of evil), and that we are just pawns in some absurd game played by a nearly omnipotent power that can send you to heaven or hell based on the very behaviors built into your psyche.Well, such would apply to most other religions as well I suppose. So an indictment of Islam is not appropriate. Nonetheless the intense religious climate of the movie was for me almost tyrannical. I felt so sad for all the poor ignorant people and again was reminded of the saying “willful ignorance is the only sin” and again told myself that the only way out of the morass of the Middle East is education leading to enlightenment.The film is in Arabic, French and a bit of English with English subtitles. A lot of what is said is not translated into the subtitles, but little is lost in the comprehension. There are scenes of great beauty contrasted with ugly violence. Beautiful music is played and sung, and there is a soccer game played without a ball. Such is the absurdity of life under the jihadists, who are really just thugs using a distorted vision of Islam in order to justify their crimes. --Dennis Littrell, author of “Understanding Religion and Ourselves”

Thomas Hobbes famously wrote in Leviathan (1668) about the relationship between society and the state. Most people, it was thought, valued freedom above all else. But he said no. More important was security, protection, safety. The state exists to provide this for the people, he wrote, and he was right. If not, why in our day the enormous defence and military budgets, the spy agencies, the homeland securities with their surveillance systems (ID cards, data bases, CCTV cameras, etc.)? All these things — these freedoms impinged upon — are tolerated by people in return for the promise of state protection. Which is why terrorism is so successful, or can be. It looks for the Achille’s heel in states that are weakened and concentrates all its might there.What does the world look like where the state is broken, where the people are defenceless, where the warlords and jihadists fill the void with their arbitrary rule? It looks like Timbuktu, or the Timbuktu portrayed in this sad but enlightening film. Here the moral enforcers operate under Sharia law. They’re killjoys of course, rigid ideologues with no funny bones in them. Music, song and dance are outlawed. Why? Forms of free expression. Smoking and drinking are forbidden. Why? Forms of decadence and degeneracy. Football is banned. Why? It’s fun, and fun is uncontrollable. As for women, the second sex, they’re born to obey what men decide, decisions disguised under holy law. Covered heads, faces, hands too with gloves in the oppressive heat.The law, they also say, is God’s will. So who’s to argue with it? None. And just in case, these so-called holy men have guns. Lots of them. One might reasonably ask, “What are religious people, holy men, doing with guns?” But no one is allowed to be reasonable and ask.Religion of course is politics by another name. Or can be, and is so here in Timbuktu. What punishments for violations of Sharia law are meted out? To the girl, perhaps 17 or 18, who refused to wear black gloves to cover her hands, 40 lashes across her back in the public square. Worse is stoning, the accused buried in the ground up to the neck and pummelled with stones. We see these atrocities committed in the name of religion, the shouts to Allah as righteous and good ringing out while the rocks are hurled. A travesty, anarchy, a gangland of outlaws who rule when the protective power of the state has been broken. In such a place at such a time the best one can hope for is to be inconspicuous, invisible even better.Kidane is trying his best to be invisible. He’s a cattle herder who lives with his wife and young daughter (possibly 10 years old) in a large tent along a river far from the nearest village. He’s well off the beaten track by design, his refuge a form of freedom, however limited. Here he and his family can live in peace. Or so he reckons. But life being what it is (largely ironic), things are never quite so easy. By trying to become inconspicuous he becomes conspicuous, suspicious. Why live in such a remote place if he has nothing to hide? The Sharia warriors will want to know, and if they are dissatisfied with his answers they may wish to exact their pound of flesh. There is little protection. Remoteness is the best he can do under such trying circumstances. It provides some cover. At night he strums his guitar, his wife and daughter singing to it, their faces radiant in the campfire glow. Here the ban on music cannot reach them.But a crisis occurs. Accusations against Kidane are made. How will he defend himself? There is no secular law to speak of. There was but now it’s gone. Who will protect his family if he cannot, if he is taken from it? What rights has he? How will he survive, if he can?The film is an investigation into this last question (and several others). It wants to know how people can be expected to live this way. It doesn’t say so directly but proposes fairness, justice, and equality under legitimate law, not unjust qualities enacted under laws interpreted by religion.Thomas Hobbes could not have known much if anything about life in the part of Africa now called Mali. But he needn’t have understood the details there to know the principle of what he espoused. He was right and the film shows how and why he was. The people suffer because they have little protection from those who make new rules sanctioned by guns and holy books. The people are at their mercy, a quality non-existent in these ideologues.This is the future when fair and just government breaks down, when anarchy reigns and warlords take over. They don’t even need an ideology. They just need might and the willingness to express it arbitrarily and liberally, if one can pardon the latter expression. The far-off deserts of Timbuktu and Mali may not seem to hold any warning for us. But this is deceptive. They do. This film does. It says we must remain vigilant to have good governments govern us, for if we don’t and are left to forces beyond them for protection, we may all become remote desert dwellers, looking wherever we can for the safest places to hide.The film doesn’t make for easy viewing. All the more reason, then, why it should be seen. Also, though this may seem largely irrelevant, the light and colours of the desert are beautiful to behold. So too the music, played and sung by Mali musicians.Languages spoken and subtitled in English are French, Arabic, and the local minority languages of Tamasheq and Bambara.

Beautifully filmed, and a story that is uncomfortably close to reality. A somewhat satirical, sad and sometimes cruel story loosely based on the true temporary conquest of Timbuktu by jihadist fighters, with a number of human story threads that keep you engrossed. I originally watched this at an international film festival and eventually had to buy the DVD. Thought-provoking. Humans can be totally irrational. Watch it.

A beautiful slow sad film that takes its time to make its point. Set in a part of the Sahel that overlaps different ethnic groups, languages, religions, traditions and ways of agricultural or pastoral life , the rule of strict Sharia law has to cover a myriad of interactions. From punishing (brutally) the playing of music to administering a justice system based on paying a cattle price for killing, the general effect is of a medieval or early modern society which has been given AK47s and Toyota technicals.

Timbuktu I visited three times in the 1980- and 1990's. The film is really a masterpiece - how the fundamentalist acted when they occupied the beautiful town and forced its people to toe the lines to their interpretation of Koran. A very serious film, not for the faint hearted - but should be watched at least once. This film really a masterpiece.

I mistakenly thought this film was a documentary when I bought it instead of fiction, but it does detail the struggles of one family against ISIS and thereby illuminates the oppression of that organisation.