Entertainment

Film Review: Timbuktu

Published

9 years ago

January 28, 2015

Oakland Post

Toulou Kiki, Ibrahim Ahmed, and Laya Walet Mohamed co-star in the drama, Timbuktu. (Courtesy Photo)

By Dwight Brown
NNPA Film Critic

Islamic fundamentalists are encroaching on the basic liberties of people in Africa and the Arab world. We hear about it, but it’s hard to put into context, hard to understand the magnitude of the situation. Leave it to veteran, Mauritanian filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako (Bamako) to boil a complicated social phenomena down to a simple allegorical tale that’s as educational and spiritual as a biblical passage.

A dark cloud looms as Jihadists take over Timbuktu, Mali. The zealots have outlawed music, soccer and socializing. They’re hostile to local men and particularly treacherous to women, especially those who try to make a living. They impose harsh sentences, even death, for any offense.

Miles away in a desolate area, surrounded by golden sand dunes and only a few shrubs, a Tureg family makes a meager existence. The people around them have fled, bullied by the encroachers. Kidane (Ibrahim Ahmed) lives with his wife Satima (Toulou Kiki), his 12-year-old daughter Toya (Laya Walet Mohamed) and Issan (Mehdi A.G. Mohamed) their young shepherd, an orphan the couple adopted.

The daily indignities of the new repressed life in Timbuktu feel a lifetime away, until Issan and one of Kidane’s cows is involved in an incident with a fisherman. Kidane comes to Issan’s defense. That confrontation takes Kidane from a cloistered, sanguine life into the middle of a religious/cultural/political tyranny he couldn’t fathom. He’s soon fighting for his life.

The scourge of Sub Sahara and Northern Africa and Arab countries comes into full view in this minimalist, modern, pastoral fable. It is expertly told by Abderrahmane Sissako, whose inspiration for this cautionary tale was an incident in Mali, where a couple with two children was stoned to death because they were not legally married. Extremists were the culprits.

We read about the 220 little girls who were kidnapped, think it’s a major atrocity but don’t understand how that kind of terrorism and oppression grinds people down on a daily basis. In just 97 minutes, this astute filmmaker, with co-writer Kessen Tall, boils down the complexities of the new fanaticism, into terms we can understand. He does it with a vignette featuring vulnerable humans who had lived life with a reasonable expectation of basic freedoms that are now stripped away, day by day.

Golden sand dunes provide a rich background, a mesmerizing canvas through the lens of Director of Photography Sofian el Fani (Blue is the Warmest Color), who actually shot the footage in the towns of Oualata and Nema, Mauritania. The tightly-woven storytelling is aided by the precision editing of Nadia Ben Rachid. Amine Bouhafa’s music accentuates the right scenes, from the simple family life to the harsh tribunals.

Ibrahim Ahmed’s stoic portrayal of Kidane centers the movie. He makes the character lifelike, deserving of a wonderful life and not indignities. Toulou Kiik, as his loving wife Satim who is warned to cover her face with a burka or suffer the consequences, displays inner strength. Layla Walet Mohamed as the young girl Toya and Mehdi AG Mohamed as Issan, the catalyst, are perfectly innocent. Salem Dendou doesn’t overplay the role of Chief Jihadist, the head of the tribunal. His interpretation of the demonic antagonist is that he is rightfully in power and serving a higher being than everyone else.

Many films take on a controverisal subject and become preachy and dogmatic. In the hands of Sissako, the plight of thousands if not millions of people who are losing basic freedoms too militant religious fanatics is all the more devastating because he trimmed the problem down to its roots. To the basics.

This is a masterwork from one of the world’s most perceptive artists. In fact calling Sissako a brilliant filmmaker is an understatement. He comes from a tradition of storytelling that made African filmmakers like Ousmane Sembène (Guelwaar) healers, shamans and elders. He’s a genius.

Visit NNPA Film Critic Dwight Brown at DwightBrownInk.com.

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Entertainment

O.J. Simpson, 76, Dies of Prostate Cancer

Orenthal James (O.J.) Simpson, who rose to fame as a college football player who went on to the NFL and parlayed his talents in acting and sportscasting, succumbed to prostate cancer on April 10, his family announced.

Published

2 days ago

April 17, 2024

Oakland Post

Orenthal James (O.J.) Simpson. Wikipedia photo

By Post Staff

Born and raised in San Francisco, the Galileo High School graduate was recruited by the University of Southern California after he was on a winning Junior College All-American team.

At USC, he gained wide acclaim as a running back leading to him becoming the No. 1 pick in the AFL-NFL draft in 1969 and joining the Buffalo Bills, where he had demanded – and received — the largest contract in professional sports history: $650,000 over five years. In 1978, the Bills traded Simpson to his hometown team, the San Francisco 49ers, retiring from the game in 1979.

Simpson’s acting career had begun before his pro football career with small parts in 1960s TV (“Dragnet”) before “Roots” and film (“The Klansman,” “The Towering Inferno,” Capricorn One”).

He was also a commentator for “Monday Night Football,” and “The NFL on NBC,” and in the mid-1970s Simpson’s good looks and amiability made him, according to People magazine, “the first b\Black athlete to become a bona fide lovable media superstar.”

The Hertz rent-a-car commercials raised his recognition factor while raising Hertz’s profit by than 50%, making him critical to the company’s bottom line.

It could be said that even more than his success as a football star, the commercials of his running through airports endeared him to the Black community at a time when it was still unusual for a Black person to represent a national, mainstream company.

He remained on Hertz team into the 1990s while also getting income endorsing Pioneer Chicken, Honey Baked Ham and Calistoga water company products and running O.J. Simpson Enterprises, which owned hotels and restaurants.

He married childhood sweetheart Marguerite Whitley when he was 19 and became the father of three children. Before he divorced in 1979, he met waitress and beauty queen Nicole Brown, who he would marry in 1985. A stormy relationship before, during and after their marriage ended, it would lead to a highway car chase as police sought to arrest Simpson for the murder by stabbing of Brown and her friend Ron Goldman in 1994.

The pursuit, arrest, and trial of Simpson were among the most widely publicized events in American history, Wikipedia reported.

Characterized as the “Trial of the Century,” he was acquitted by a jury in 1995 but found liable in the amount of $33 million in a civil action filed by the victims’ families three years later.

Simpson would be ensnared in the criminal justice system 12 years later when he was arrested after forcing his way into a Las Vegas hotel room to recover sports memorabilia he believed belonged to him.

In 2008, he received a sentence of 33 years and was paroled nine years later in 2017.

When his death was announced, Simpson’s accomplishments and downfalls were acknowledged.

Sports analyst Christine Brennan said: “… Even if you didn’t love football, you knew O.J. because of his ability to transcend sports and of course become the businessman and the pitchman that he was.

“And then the trial, and the civil trial, the civil case he lost, and the fall from grace that was extraordinary and well-deserved, absolutely self-induced, and a man that would never be seen the same again,” she added.

“OJ Simpson played an important role in exposing the racial divisions in America,” attorney Alan Dershowitz, an adviser on Simpson’s legal “dream team” told the Associated Press by telephone. “His trial also exposed police corruption among some officials in the Los Angeles Police Department. He will leave a mixed legacy. Great athlete. Many people think he was guilty. Some think he was innocent.”

“Cookie and I are praying for O.J. Simpson’s children … and his grandchildren following his passing. I know this is a difficult time,” Magic Johnson said on X.

“I feel that the system failed Nicole Brown Simpson and failed battered women everywhere,” attorney Gloria Allred, who once represented Nicole’s family, told ABC News. “I don’t mourn for O.J. Simpson. I do mourn for Nicole Brown Simpson and her family, and they should be remembered.”

Simpson was diagnosed with prostate cancer about a year ago and was undergoing chemotherapy treatment, according to Pro Football Hall of Fame President Jim Porter. He died in his Las Vegas, Nevada, home with his family at his side.

He is survived by four children: Arnelle and Jason from his first marriage and Sydney and Justin from his second marriage. He was predeceased son, Aaren, who drowned in a family swimming pool in 1979.

Sources for this report include Wikipedia, ABC News, Associated Press, and X.