Making Sense of Bamako… or not.

I found Bamako very long and tedious (partly because I watched it right after finishing Hyenas, which had the same sort of feel), and after finishing it, I was not entirely sure what it was about. Therefore, I went on IMDB, Wikipedia, Rotten Tomatoes, and other review sites to figure out what others had said about the film. All of the synopses said essentially the same thing – that the film depicts both a troubled couple coping with their problems and the very important trial… and that it “approaches both subjects with equal skill and success” (Rotten Tomatoes).

Sure, I understood the trial, and I thought that the arguments against the World Bank and the IMF were very well presented and thought out. Some of the witnesses point out issues that I would have never thought about (I probably wouldn’t have even considered the negative effects of the World Bank in general, let alone more specifically the problems with, for example, the high interest placed on African nations’ debt), and the direction and screenplay seem to forcefully emphasize the idea of accountability, which I think is a very valuable contribution. The witnesses put faces and names to the numbers, providing a more personalized view of policies which many people probably never think twice about, especially not in terms of anything besides numbers and dollars. In this way, the film is effective, getting across a new take on an important post-colonial message without sounding too preachy.

I absolutely did not catch on to the storyline of the couple, however. Even now after reading many synopses and reviews, I can’t place who the husband was in the film (I remember the woman more vividly, especially her singing – which I now understand was symbolic). I found the shots of the ordinary, every day life to be mildly interesting, but I didn’t find that it formed a cohesive story. I am still baffled by the ridiculous Western on TV, the whole storyline of the gun (I have no idea who got shot at the end!), and scenes such as the one in the church. As I was watching, I thought that these scenes served to show that life goes on and to emphasize the juxtaposition of this important trial with its location (both physical location and its place in Malian society), but in retrospect, this juxtaposition does not make sense to me. It is strange that, during such a significant trial in which Africans are speaking for themselves (in contrast to the more common situation where the West seems to decide what to do to or for Africa without really considering its actions from a different point of view – which is how many of the problems discussed during the trail arose in the first place), many of the Malians seem indifferent or at least only very mildly interested in the proceedings. These seem like contradictory representations to me – Africans are, at the same time, taking action and standing up for themselves (in some cases, very passionately – such as the woman who becomes so upset that she must have her blood pressure taken after she finishes speaking or the man who sings a quite emotional song) as well as disregarding the trial or passively listening without getting at all involved. I am not sure which representation (if it is even one of these at all) the film is trying to convey.

Perhaps I just need to watch the film again in order to pick up on some of the subtleties of the work, but as of now I am confused by the critics’ rave reviews, as well as by the mechanisms the director chose to communicate his (also unclear) meaning.