Review of Timbuktu, directed by Abderrahmane Sissako

There are some movies that I constantly tell myself that I’m going to watch, and that I even need to watch. I can count so many films throughout the years I desperately want to see, but because I’m such a big procrastinator in nature, I end up putting it off for the longest time.

I feel really bad when I do this, because I do genuinely want to see these movies, but my time has become so limited in recent years.

If you can’t tell, this is leading up to the fact Timbuktu has been one of those movies. I heard about it originally when I was in college, noted it down somewhere in my brain, and then it kept appearing again when I was in graduate school.

The universe has been constantly telling me to watch this movie, and I even downloaded it for a flight to LAX to watch. I took a nap instead both ways.

I ended up watching it one night on MUBI, as I felt like now was finally the time to get to it. And man, it felt like the sweet relief of ripping a Bandaid off after doing that. It felt so good.

Let’s get into the review then, shall we?

The story of one village as it’s gradually taken over by Islamic extremists.

In this movie, it begins almost with a too quiet tranquility. We get a scene of an animal running across the desert, but then the peace is broken right after that.

The focus of the film is a village in Mali, and life is about to drastically change for everyone living in there. A group of men are about to storm the village with weapons, and they’re the ones chasing the gazelle we see in the opening scene.

As one man moves by them, he is told to roll up his pants. The other men tell him this is the new law, and he must obey it.

Because they have the weapons, they are the ones who can enforce their rules, lest everything escalates into acts of violence. Another woman, who sells fish, is ordered to out on gloves while doing so. Under the new Sharia Law, this is considered a violation of Islam.

She refuses though, and says that it will interrupt her way of life. There is no way she can properly handle the fish with gloves on, but it doesn’t matter what she thinks. No one’s input is involved in the process of the new rule in the village, which is one of the overarching problems with what’s happening.

We shift our focus to a man who raises cattle for a living: Kidane. He lives with his wife and daughter on the outskirts of the village, and they are nomads. They don’t have a proper home, so they live in tents, refusing to fully adapt to the modern ways, although there are glimpses of technology and other contemporary inventions found throughout their lives.

Their way of living defies the Islamic rule being enforced on the village, especially when one of the leaders involved with the new government finds himself smitten with Kidane’s wife.

The conflict continues to boil throughout the movie. A tipping point for everything going on, in Kidane’s perspective, is that beloved cow is killed by another fisherman.

The guy just got angry that the cow wandered into his net when it shouldn’t have, so he went ahead and killed it. Kidane goes off and kills the guy with a weapon in an act of revenge, as he really liked that cow. This then puts him in the crosshairs of the new leadership.

Because a leader of the group is in love with Kidane’s wife, this complicates even further the punishment that’s going to come his way. The final portion of the movie dwells on the consequences of his actions, as well as the tension between the old ways of living along with the new.

We occasionally move around with the camera to see other perspectives, such as a young girl who defies the rules and ends up being made to look like a fool because of it.

Overall Thoughts

While this certainly wasn’t my favorite movie in the world, I am glad I watched it. African cinema has been something I’ve wanted to get into more lately, as well as African literature.

There’s an unsettling feeling towards everything unfolding on the screen throughout Timbuktu, but the main messages are so subtle and compelling to me that I wanted to keep watching.

I could see how someone without a critical eye or interest in the region might find themselves bored with this kind of movie though.

It moves kind of slowly, especially for those who are used to more mainstream Western movies, and I think that someone might even consider the plot to be anticlimactic at times.

I didn’t see it as such, but, again, I could easily see how someone might view it that way. Anyways, I’m glad I watched this, as it felt like an intimate glimpse into something larger that I want to delve deeper into studying and learning more about.

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