Athens International Film + Video Festival review: Oscar-nominated Timbuktu is a bouncy look at religion and culture, which can be powerful at times and tiresome at moments as well.
As a lullaby shaken with pity and despair, Abderrahmane Sissako’s well-meaning Timbuktu certainly has its merits. Softly studious yet lavishly filmed, there’s a distinct, richly crafted film in this Best Foreign Film nominee, which makes it all-the-more distressing when it occasionally loses its way.
Just like its title implies, Timbuktu looks at a whole city in distress. While a cattle herder and his family hosts the primary focus of Sissako’s film, they are merely in a rotating circle of characters whose lives and stories get brought to the screen. Although the universal approach has some scornful and harkening benefits, often these subplots get in the way of the story at hand.
They all lead up to a conclusion that is hard to not call affecting, but as this somber narrative bounces back and forth, it loses its primary focus in order to talk about a variety of topics plaguing the minds of Sissako and his co-writer Kessen Tall.
As seen and heard by continued looks and conversations on the nature of religion, politics and crime, Timbuktu wants to observe subsets of culture doubts at once. It makes the story feel inconstant and often these subplots feel hastily placed into the plot. Only half really resonate as it comes time to wrap up, but those who do hit the emotional cue cards strike them hard.
At its best, Sissako’s film is unflinching and heartbreaking. With rich knowledge of history and Jihad, it communicates a way of life unseen by many. This has its fair share of convictions, and when Timbuktu truly sits down to focus on what distresses itself the most, it communicates a film layered with wrought, parables and thought-provoking possibilities. Were it able to communicate this in its entire 97 minute running time, it’s hard to imagine this not being an even more powerful feature.
For what it is, however, there’s no denying this is still a solid film. The performances all around are rightfully subdued and the cinematography by Sofiane El Fani gives the film an equal balance of near bystander look at these conflicted lives and lavish backdrops of West Africa deserts. A work of restrained, personable characterization, it would be all the more harrowing were its storytelling not so haphazard.
Rating: 3/5 stars
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