A beautifully observed Timbuktu story

By Daniel Nelson

There’s a wonderful scene in Timbuktu, set in northern Mali after the region was t

Timbuktu

Image by Timbuktu

Football is forbidden. So are music and smoking, although, as everyone knows, one of the jihadi commanders is constantly popping behind sand dunes for a puff. (Socks for women are compulsory.)

Clearly, he finds it no easier than the villagers to give up habits and pleasures, even when the punishments are strict. His soldiers creep around the village homes at night, trying to trace the source of music, before bursting in on a small group of young men and women strumming and singing. It’s 40 lashes for the singer, who instinctively breaks into a lament as a response to the pain.

So when herder Kidane accidentally shoots a fishermen during a retaliatory tussle over the fisher killing of his favourite cow, GPS, there is little doubt what lies in store for him.

The confrontation in the river is filmed in a single, slow, magnificent take: director Abderrahmane Sissako is a superb film-maker.

As the name of the cow indicates, he also has a sense of humour, with a subtle touch. This little drama is a moving,  humane, touching observation –  the local imam counsels the absolutist conquerors against their uncouthness and unbending hardness – rather than a brutal polemic.  There’s a short scene of an adultery stoning but Sissako’s brilliant opening is more his style: shooting practice using carved wooden figures as targets, which splinter under the hail of bullets. Sissako makes it clear that the jihadists are a minority group imposing a culture with the help of foreign fighters.

He paints a picture of a loving family facing dangerous times. Kidane’s wife Salima sees the risks in the isolation of their lives, their neighbours having moved away from the Islamist clampdown. She also advises against her husband taking his gun with him to the river. But she cannot stop him.

Kidane dotes on their 12-year-old daughter, Toya, and she is the focus if his thoughts once his rural idyll is crushed and replaced by prison hell. Unafraid of death, he just wants to see his daughter’s face.

It’s a slow, measured, beautifully-shot, humane film, offering insight and understanding.

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