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Abderrahmane Sissako's Bamako reinvents the political fiction film, says Nick James
Bamako seems many different films in one: melodrama, documentary and spoof. We start out watching a gently paced Malian soap, with touches of poetic realism, about families who share a large house and courtyard. But a formal trial is taking place in that courtyard, with the wind whipping at black robes and wigs, so our concern for the gorgeous bar singer falling out with her ineffectual husband is deflected into the earnest pleas of learned counsel, expressed in high-flown French. Under debate is the role of the IMF and the World Bank in Africa; they are being put on trial by African civil society. There is passion on both sides of the argument, and while it is clear that the defendants are up for the pillory, the film does not opt for propaganda or facile solutions.
This semi-Brechtian device feels strange only momentarily. Hard as it might be to maintain the august atmosphere of a trial in the outdoors, writer-director Abderrahmane Sissako and his charismatic actors dispel any hint of anachronism. We might expect the trial to act like a Greek chorus to the life around it, orating the political context to life in Bamako, but that hierarchy is reversed: it's the trial that provides the real drama and the glimpsed shards of lifestyle only illustrate, even if they're filmed with all the quiet attention of a Kiarostami. A witty Sergio Leone parody cuts in occasionally, with Sissako and fellow directors Danny Glover and Elia Suleiman shooting up everything in sight. At a time when the formal presentation of party politics seems to be meeting with ever-increasing apathy, this groundbreaking film by the director of October and Waiting for Happiness revitalises political drama with seeming effortlessness.
Bamako ' is the pretext for the discussion 'Sight & Sound Presents: Eye on Africa' at the London Film Festival, see programme for details