The joys of simple pleasures – a drink of tea, a smoke, a notebook – underscore the notion that life is more than the big picture.
By: Bob Brown
You’re not likely to have seen the Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako’s work on local cinema screens. His films are the kind favored by festivals but limited in distribution. Heremakono screens at the New Jersey Film Festival in New Brunswick Nov. 14 to 16.
Sissako grew up in Mali, then studied film at the VGIK Film Institute in Moscow for six years. His film Life on Earth (1998), about the introduction of modern technology to rural Mali, made the festival circuit at Cannes, Toronto, Sundance and New York. In his films, he wants to portray the African experience of exile and the juxtaposition of African societies and the West.
The way he presents the medium here is alien to American audiences. In order to get into a film like this, you need to readjust your expectations. Prepare for film as flow rather than linear narrative.
What Heremakono lacks in a coherent plot, it more than makes up for in an evocative, poetic exploration of life as process. The setting, the camerawork, the music, even the ambient sounds all contribute to a dreamy sense of uneasy longing, despite the small pleasures of everyday life.
The setting is Nouadhibou, a seaside village on the Atlantic coast of North Africa. It is a transit point, where people come to earn enough money so they can travel somewhere else. Housing is temporary. In Mali, it’s called "waiting for happiness."
Here, the sub-Saharan sands run right to the water it’s all beach in this country. To look at it, nothing has changed for centuries. The sounds of waves and wind, the flapping of fabrics, are continuous. People in their colorful robes stand out like jewels against a canvas of white sands and washed-out hovels.
The stories here are loosely linked: Seventeen-year-old Abdallah has come to visit his mother before he departs for Europe. He has lived away from his native village for many years, so he is a stranger in this land, not even knowing the local Arabic dialect. He spends his days wandering restlessly and observing. Without language skills, the director has explained, "The point of view sharpens and he pays closer attention to the world around him." The camera’s languorous eye lingers over what he sees. Shots tend to be held for a long time, punctuating the sense that nothing is "happening," that the clock is stuck, that people are in limbo.
Abdallah’s sometime language tutor is an orphaned village boy, Khatra, who lives with his guardian, the elder fisherman Maata. Boy and man regard each other with affection and frustration. They tap into the electrical grid when they want power or light. The old man tells stories of the old days; they debate whether to fear death. The boy, meanwhile, is very much a boy, playing with odd objects that interest him paper money, a refractory lens, a light bulb.
There are fleeting glimpses of other villagers: a young man who has himself photographed with each of his friends before he sets off for Spain; a sensual and sad young woman; an extraordinarily gifted little girl who is learning the old songs at the foot of her mentor, a middle-aged woman (Nèma Mint Choueikh) who plays a resonator harp.
There are many dichotomies in the film: young aspirations versus old frustrations; modern versus ancient technology; Western versus African culture. The West is rubbing uncomfortably against Africa in ways that threaten to erase its sense of identity. Young people are the hope for saving their culture, but there is an uneasy feeling that they would seek happiness elsewhere if they could travel away from the village. Only the little girl seems thoroughly committed to her role. "I’m learning music," she tells Khatra.
And the music is glorious. The soundtrack is a mixture of modern Afro-Pop with some authentic North African folk tunes performed on original instruments. There’s an infectious scene where village women have gathered to sing and watch one of their number dance on an elaborate Persian rug. The little girl is herself amazing. She recites back the lyrics she is being taught, but in a way that is more nuanced and skillful than her teacher. All she needs to learn are the lyrics. Otherwise, she would be a pop sensation just about anywhere.
Despite the feeling that time and life are stuck here, the bright colors of the clothes, the joys of simple pleasures, like a drink of tea, a smoke, a notebook, all underscore the notion that life is more than the big picture. Attending to the little joys is as much a part of what makes life worth living as surviving its uncertainties.
This film is not rated. In French and Hassanian Arabic with English subtitles.
Heremakono screens at the New Jersey Film Festival, Rutgers University, Scott Hall 123, New Brunswick, Nov. 14 to 16, 7 p.m. For information, call (732) 932-8482. On the Web: www.njfilmfest.com