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BAMAKO (2006): Court drama African style

January 9th 2009 08:37

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Abderrahmane Sissako’s Bamako is one of those rare film-going experiences that educates, challenges preconceived notions and simultaneously manages to express the culture, the feelings and the plight of the people on whose behalf it speaks. Using the conventions of courtroom drama, we are presented with a faux trial of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and their ruthless debt policies in Bamako, Mali. Various representatives of the community, from intellectuals to peasants, are called in as witnesses. Each provides crushing evidence of pervasive injustice and inhumanity experienced on a daily basis and demonstrates the sheer impossibility of a dignified life in this vicious circle of poverty. In the background, life in Bamako continues in its easy sun-bathed rhythm, illustrating the complexities and absurdities of issues discussed in the trial as they affect people’s daily lives. The astounding landscapes and beautiful people clash with the extreme hardship of life surrounding the makeshift open-air court, as a couple marries, families struggle to survive at the cost of their own integrity, and a sick man patiently awaits his death as he cannot afford treatment. All this heartbreak is interspersed with flashes of music and humour – Danny Glover, one of the film’s producers, appears in a mock-spaghetti western depicting a morality tale “African style”.

Aïssata Tall Sall and William Bourdon as the attorneys and Assa Badiallo Souko as one of the witnesses in Bamako

Despite Bamako’s political seriousness, Sissako avoids outright didacticism, opting for articulate and passionate engagement and well-rounded relaying of some of the problems instead. A must see for anyone wishing to expand their understanding of contemporary Africa and the consequences of globalization from the African perspective. The effect of the peasant’s (Zegue Bamba) poetic, languorous singsong lament lingers on the surrounding viewer’s faces and in our ears long after the film is over.

Review by Patricia Bieszk

© Copyright P. Bieszk 2006

First published in The Pundit, July-August 2006, p. 11.

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