I want to preface this by saying that I apologize for the brevity of this review and the last one, but there really just wasn’t a whole lot for me to expand on in either film.
I had high hopes for Bamako. Scores in the 80s are tough to come by on MetaCritic and I usually am a fan of any movie that is left-leaning or politically subversive. When I heard that the basis of the film was a trial in which the powerful international economic institutions were being challenged by African society I was intrigued. Given these factors, it seems strange to report that I found Bamako to be completely and utterly unwatchable. I literally fell asleep on two separate occasions trying to watch this film, a record only bested by the three times I fell asleep when my ex-girlfriend tried to get me to watch Pride & Prejudice.
Almost 100% of the film takes place in an outdoor courtroom where lawyers and citizens take turns approaching a podium and then prattling on for 10 minutes. The only breaks in the monotony are the small glimpses into the day to day life of Africans. We see several of the citizens’ every day tasks and gain very limited information about the lives of a few characters. These departures from the courtroom vary from mildly interesting to completely irrelevant. One of the most ridiculous of these was the 5 minute clip from some random western that bizarrely featured Danny Glover in a non-speaking role. How weird is that? (edit: Turns out he was a producer. Still the scene was random and bad.)
After making it about an hour into the movie on my second attempt (during which I did push ups and sit ups to get my blood flowing so you can’t say I didn’t give it my all), I came to the realization that there was no way I was going to make it through the rest. I did, however, want to see if any storyline developed or significant events occurred, so I fast forwarded through the last hour. Sure enough, nothing happened. The entire movie was literally speech after speech after speech. It’s ridiculous.
I can’t really recommend this movie to anyone, it was that terrible of a movie viewing experience. Wait, scratch that, if you’re my sophomore year World Politics teacher (who spent 80% of the semester rambling about Africa) then you might enjoy this, otherwise you’ll be bored out of your skull.
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boring boring boring movie. It definitely wasn’t just you because I was dozing off just as bad as you were.
yea..i jus watched it last week for a course…TERRIBLEE
I like art movies, so the problem with this movie wasn’t simply that it was an art movie where “nothing happens.” The problem was simply that the movie was strident and one-dimensional, and there was a disturbing lack of balance. It was a farce. I was rooting for Sissako to put up a good movie. He didn’t put on an interesting or intelligent debate about the IMF/World bank and their role in Africa; instead he lectured us regarding his biases on the matter. I’m African. I was disappointed.
And yet, if you google reviews for the movie, they go on about what a great, relevant, artfully done movie it is. Its a crap movie but apparently our guilt won’t let us call it what it is.