There’s a lot in a name - when the name is Malala
Daniel Nelson
He Named Me Malala
Image by He Named Me Malala
The title’s deflection to father Ziauddin Yousafzai is appropriate because the film is most interesting when it focusses on her family life rather than chronicling her extra-curricula campaigning for girls’ and women’s rights.
That’s not to play down her effectiveness as a campaigner: her directness, level-headedness and poise give her speeches, TV appearances and visits to schools and refugee camps a refreshing authenticity. She never looks manipulated, or as though she’s gone along for the rise, or self-centred. She’s a natural. But director Davis Guggenheim (whose previous work includes An Inconvenient Truth) over-eggs it with stirring music and an adulatory approach.
At home, the spotlight is still on perkiness and humour and happy family life. Malala deftly dodges sporadic efforts to probe a little deeper, including, inevitably, who she fancies (cricketer Shahid Afridi, tennis pro Roger Federer and actor Brad Pitt seem to be front-runners). Nevertheless, reality occasionally breaks through: mum is straining to adapt to her new life (moral: an education, as advocated by her daughter, would make matters easier), the children are aware that their parents have favourites; Malala is not completely at ease at school.
How interesting it would be to know more about how the apparently happy-go-lucky brothers feel , or what Malala’s mother thinks about ending up in Birmingham; how mum and dad are getting on in a new environment; whether Malala’s classmates regard her as so distant from their own culture and circumstances that they don’t really notice her.
But it’s not that sort of documentary, even if there are a few insights, such as dad’s own pre-Malala barnstorming public-speaking career, overcoming a slight stutter. The Taliban’s unsuccessful 2012 assassination attack on the 15-year-old is woven into the narrative, the bullets from which have left permanent damage, but It’s a heart-warming, inspirational, feel-good film, a tribute to the youngest-ever Nobel Prize winner, giving hope that one day education will be universal.
The film has no time for criticism, apart from a brief montage of churlish bigots dismissing Malala as no different from anyone else, a creation of the West and a dummy (“just a girl”) for her ventriloquist father – a precise expression of the misogyny that must be overcome if Malala and the drive for girls’ education are to be successful.
· He Named Me Malala goes on release in UK on 6 November
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