Mali during the Middle ages. Nianankoro lives with his mother in a village. In a bowl of water, he sees the vision of his father, Soma, a Shaman, who wants to kill him because Nianankoro may cause the latter's demise. Nianankoro departs and flees, while Soma is searching for him using a pole that is carried by two men, and which is used as a compass to find Nianankoro. When Nianankoro is arrested in a village for suspicion of trying to steal goats, he uses his own magic powers to "freeze" the two warriors who wanted to slay him. This impresses the king who asks Nianankoro to help cure his wife, Attou, from infertility, but Nianankoro has sex with her, and the couple is thus banished from the village. They finally reach a canyon city where Nianankoro meets his uncle Djigui, who was blinded by the powers of a plank. Finally, when Soma arrives, Nianankoro uses the plank to fight him. A beam of light illuminates everything. Later, a kid digs up two ostrich egss in a desert and gives it to Attou.
Director Souleymane Cisse's most famous film, and somewhere regarded as one of the best films from Africa, "Yeelen" is a heavily mythical, allegorical, subconscious and symbolic experience, a fantasy art-film, yet still not quite as grand as some superlatives from critics would let you believe. Cisse directs the entire film in an astringent, 'scarce' style reminiscent of P. P. Pasolini, A. Tarkovsky and W. Herzog, a one that evokes both subconscious themes (a lad trying to escape from his father who wants to kill him as a 'rite of passage' ritual) and fascination with nature, yet while his images are impressive, his narration and storyline are sometimes too hermetic and confusing at times. Allegedly the actor playing the father died during filming, and thus, in order to "patch up" some parts, Cisse resorted to the trick that the father took on the shape of the uncle in the scene where he meets the king, which causes some confusion. A huge misstep is the opening sequence showing vile animal cruelty (a chicken burned alive while tied to a pole), which lowers the movie's level and should have been cut, whereas other minor flaws are also apparent (some half way into the film, "Yeelen" lingers too long on a 10-minute sequence of the shamans talking in nature; the main protagonists, Nianankoro and Attou, are underdeveloped characters, since they are just archetypes, not fully fledged personalities...). Still, the movie has imagination in these fantasy elements (a creature on a tree that looks like a man wearing a head of a hyena; Nianankoro uses his magic to "freeze" the movement of two warriors who wanted to slay him) and sometimes uses them to illustrate some character traits (Soma, the father, uses animal sacrifice for his magic, indicating his selfish nature, whereas Nianankoro uses just a bone for a spell, in order to avoid harm). The finale with the duel between Soma and Nianankoro is underwhelming and too thin—since the whole film builds up to it, it comes as too fleeting—yet it still gives a 'cinematic voice' to all these Malian legends which cause meditative awe to the Western viewers.
Grade:++
No comments:
Post a Comment