06.13.06
SIFF 2006, day 18
Delwende, leve-toi et marche (Get up and walk!)
Burkina Faso
A rash of deaths in a West African village leads to a beautiful young dancer being exiled to a mysterious community of witches. Based on true events and skillfully utilizing a supporting cast of non-actors, this is an intriguing look at the persistent power of superstition.
Well, now I’m certain the people who wrote the blurbs haven’t seen the films. Here’s what actually happens: the “young dancer” (the dancing happens only in the opening sequence) tells her mother that she’s been raped, but won’t say more. Her mother tries to get her father to deal with the issue, and the father refuses. However, he does abruptly decide that it would be best, due to all the mysterious deaths, if the daughter were to be married off and gotten out of the village, for her own “safety.” After she’s gone, the village elders (all men) decide that the deaths mean the village must have been cursed by a witch–and as it happens, the ritual used to make the identification (in which the father participates) identifies the girl’s mother as the witch, and she’s driven out; no other community will take her in due to the stigma. When the girl learns of this, she leaves her new husband and vows to find her mother and get to the truth, a task that has many pitfalls of superstition and sexism along the way. (The film’s subtitle refers to the fact that the girl walks, powerfully and purposefully and long distances, in her quest.)
I make efforts to catch every African film that shows up at SIFF, particularly ones from sub-Saharan countries. SIFF is, in part, a cultural enrichment program for me, and American knowledge of the countries and issues of Africa is so woefully inadequate that every bit of exposure I can get is helpful to me. This does raise a problem for me, though, which is that the films taken purely as works of art and skill are often below the standards I expect, and yet I feel hideously imperialist and snobbish by saying so. I did think at one point that this film could have been a much more dramatically effective effort in the hands of more skilled filmmakers. However, I’m not sure that it would necessarily have been a better film. Telling this story, which ends up with an huge wallop of criticism against the traditions of its culture, from within the culture is what makes it so strong, and that outweighs the level of skill involved. The girl is almost a force of nature in her determination to not succumb to the horrible hidebound traditions, and yet she always feels like a genuine person, not a symbol, and all the moments that condemn the way tradition treats the women of the country add up to strong emotion without being embroidered or tricked out. Sure, the pacing and the dialogue and the overall performance level could be more sophisticated. But they didn’t need to be for this film to register strongly with me.