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Movies & TV Movies & TV Reviews

Timbuktu

TIMBUKTU (Abderrahmane Sissako). 97 minutes. Subtitled. Opens Friday (February 13). Rating: NNNN


Nominated for this year’s best foreign language feature Oscar, Abderrahmane Sissako‘s Timbuktu arrives with a heady political charge: it’s about Islamic militants imposing sharia law on a small community that doesn’t particularly want it.

But this is a surprisingly gentle movie, a film that lets us understand where all its characters are coming from, not just its heroes. That calm, observational tone in the face of mounting tensions will not surprise anyone who’s seen the Mauritanian filmmaker’s earlier features Waiting For Happiness or Bamako, though I readily acknowledge there might not be too many of us.

For the most part, people go about their lives without much change: the local imam (Adel Mahmoud Cherif) tries to counsel compassion, a cattle herder (Ibrahim Ahmed dit Pino) and his wife (Toulou Kiki) try to conduct themselves according to their own definitions of faith, and a singer (Fatoumata Diawara) refuses to obey the latest edict prohibiting music.

Director/co-writer Sissako is clearly on their side, but he also allows the jihadis their measure of humanity. He knows there are very few cartoon villains in the world, but plenty of people who’ll do the worst thing possible while thinking they’re being eminently reasonable.

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