5 resources on my mind

It’s summer, and while I’ve been catching up on some fantasy—finally finishing A Dance with Dragons, George R.R. Martin’s fifth of seven planned novels in the Game of Thrones series—I’ll mention a couple of other books worth reading.
1. Lord Willing? Wrestling with God’s Role in My Child’s Death by Jessica Kelley (Herald Press, 2016): This book is a deft combination of a heart-wrenching memoir about Kelley watching her 4-year-old son, Henry, die of cancer and a theological reflection driven by that experience. She explores harmful explanations that Christian culture offers the brokenhearted, such as that Henry’s tumor was a blessing in disguise or God’s discipline or part of God’s plan. She offers an alternative to the traditional view of the book of Job and concludes that “God is battling, always battling, to bring good out of evil.” She encourages readers to wrestle with their picture of God, as she has done so well.

2. Tenth of December: Stories by George Saunders (Random House, 2013): This is a highly acclaimed collection by a writer many consider the best American short story writer writing now. This book, which I finally finished recently, won the 2013 Story Prize for short story collections and the inaugural (2014) Folio Prize for the best work of fiction from any country published in the UK that year. Saunders’ stories are often quirky yet heartfelt. He combines humor and pathos amid intriguing settings. He combines satire of American life with an optimistic worldview.
The title story here is masterful. A boy goes to a pond near his home on a cold December day and finds a jacket a man has left behind. Trying to retrieve it, he falls through the ice into the water. The man who left the jacket is there to commit suicide. Then he sees the boy. Saunders alternates between the two characters’ point of view with stream-of-consciousness writing. What’s most striking about Saunders’ writing is his language and the narrative voices he creates.
Toward the end of the story, the man from the pond remembers a time with his wife: “They were sorry, they were saying with their bodies, they were accepting each other back, and that feeling, that feeling of being accepted back again and again, of someone’s affection for you expanding to encompass whatever new flawed thing had just manifested in you, that was the deepest, dearest thing he’d ever—“ Sounds like the gospel.

3. The BFG (PG): Now to films. Last week I saw The BFG, Steven Spielberg’s film based on a book by Roald Dahl. The story, set in England in an unnamed time, is about an orphan girl who is captured by a benevolent giant, whom she calls the “Big Friendly Giant” (or BFG). He takes her to Giant Country, where they must find a way to stop man-eating giants that are attacking humans. The outstanding British actor Mark Rylance, who won last year’s Oscar for best supporting actor in Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies, makes the film work. And Dahl’s funny, creative language doesn’t hurt. Then there’s Spielberg’s flawless filmmaking, particularly the magical scenes of the BFG capturing dreams. The BFG did not perform at the box office nearly as well as Pixar’s Finding Dory, which is too bad, because it’s a better film.

4. The Decalogue: A few weeks back, I was talking with fellow film buff Ben Regier about The Decalogue, the 10-part Polish TV series directed by the great Krzysztof Kieślowski that came out in 1989. I loaned Ben my copy. Each of the hour-long stories stand alone and correspond—loosely, not literally—to the Ten Commandments, following the Roman Catholic order, which is different from the Protestant order. Most of the films are set in a large housing project in Warsaw, and a few of the characters know each other. Kieślowski, who also made the Three Colors trilogy: Red, White, Blue and The Double Life of Veronique, died in 1996. Film critic Robert Fulford called The Decalogue “the best dramatic work ever done specifically for television.” I would place it in my top 10 list of the best films ever made. Unfortunately, it’s not available for streaming, though Netflix has it on DVD.
5. Call the Midwife: Finally, a TV show. Call the Midwife is shown on PBS, which aired Season 5 this spring. The show chronicles the lives of a group of midwives living in East London in the late 1950s to early 1960s. The women live in a house for Anglican nuns (not all the midwives are nuns, however), so religion is a frequent topic and simply part of the setting. The show can feel sappy at times, but it’s also gritty and realistic. While many shows are punctuated by violence, pretty graphic births punctuate this show.
The setting is key. Music and dress mark the time period, but we also learn about emerging issues in pre- and neonatal care. For example, pain-relieving gas is first used in Season 2, and in Season 5, set in 1961, the birth control pill is legalized. Also this season, we witness the tragedy of the use of thalidomide to relieve morning sickness. Later, medical science determines that the drug causes severe birth defects. By then, many babies have been born and died—often left to die—because of this drug’s use. The show may seem feel-good, but it includes tragedy and a realistic look at people—mostly women—as they negotiate bringing life into a world where poverty persists. I’ll predict you’ll get hooked.

Free State of Jones

Whenever a new movie comes out that addresses the period of slavery in the United States, viewers must confront that sordid history anew. In 2013, we saw 12 Years a Slave, and a month ago, we saw a remake of the miniseries Roots. Now comes Free State of Jones, another of the many films that are “based on a true story.”

 

 

In this new film, like many others, we get a mix of history and adaptation for dramatic purposes. The story of Newton Knight is certainly compelling. A native of Mississippi, he deserted the Confederate army with others from Jones County and led a guerrilla war against the Confederates with an army of up to 500 people that included runaway slaves.

Director and co-writer Gary Ross, who also made Seabiscuit and Hunger Games, tells the story with an eye on the motivations for Knight’s actions. He’s fortunate to have an actor as excellent as Matthew McConaughey to fill that role. His look and speech fit perfectly.

A medical orderly in the Confederate army, Knight leaves to bury a kinsman, a boy from his home county who was conscripted into the army by force, then killed on the battlefield. Back in Jones County, he learns that local Confederate soldiers are taking people’s food as a tax, leaving them without enough to survive the winter.

When he helps a family stand up to some soldiers, driving them away with guns, he becomes a fugitive and is hunted as a deserter. He hides in a nearby swamp with several runaway slaves.

The Newton Knight of the movie is a natural leader who gives speeches that draw on Scripture and class struggle. One motivation for him and others to desert the army is the “Twenty Negro Law,” which excuses one white man from the war for every 20 black slaves he owns. Knight says, “This isn’t our war.”

Ross keeps us informed of the time frame for different parts of the story by showing the dates. He also moves forward at different points to 1948 to show Knight’s great-grandson Davis Knight on trial for miscegenation, illegal according to Mississippi law. This is confusing at first but becomes pertinent as we learn more of Newton Knight’s story.

While it is a fascinating film, Free State of Jones raises several questions. One is how we view films like this that portray the evils of racism. Knight comes across early as a kind of white savior, though black slaves are given important dialogue and screen time. He also is a bit too good. A film (even at 2 ¼ hours) can’t cover the complexity of such an individual. But the real Knight had his share of flaws.

While the Knight of the movie has a son by Rachel, a slave played beautifully by Gugu Mbatha-Raw, the real Knight had three families with three different women and fathered dozens of mixed-race children. He was a man of strong principles and quick to have a knife at the throat of anyone who rubbed him the wrong way, according to The Smithsonian.

A related question regards our response to such films. We easily decry the evil of “those people,” whose racism is so blatant and so violent. But this doesn’t necessarily challenge our more subtle or hidden racism today. This is not a criticism of the film, which is telling a story from the past. But it is a caution about how we view it.

Then there’s the depiction of religion in the film. Knight was a Primitive Baptist who often quoted Scripture. And references to Scripture and to God occur in the film. But you won’t find references to Jesus’ teachings about nonviolence. As McConaughey said in an interview with The Daily Beast, Knight “was not a ‘turn the other cheek’ New Testament guy.” Redemptive violence is clearly presented here, though ultimately it didn’t work. Laws changed, and people changed, though the film only implies that; we don’t see it.

Free State of Jones is rated R for brutal battle scenes and disturbing graphic images.

Curve balls

Money Monster is a thriller that takes on current issues and offers some surprising twists, which only adds to its interest and appeal.

 

 

A cable financial guru, Lee Gates (George Clooney), is on air with his show “Money Monster” when a deliveryman ambles onto the set, pulls a gun and takes Lee hostage, forcing him to put on a vest laden with explosives. The hostage taker is Kyle Budwell (Jack O'Connell), who invested $60,000—his entire life savings, inherited from his deceased mother—in stock from a company Lee had endorsed a month earlier on the show.

Despite the extreme measures he’s taking, Kyle’s anger reflects the anger of many people who are struggling to get by. The company he invested his money in, IBIS Clear Capital, is run by CEO Walt Camby (Dominic West). Lee planned to interview him on his show to ask why the company’s stock had plummeted the day before, costing investors $800 million. Instead, IBIS chief communications officer Diane Lester (Caitriona Balfe) explains via a video feed that the stock fell because of a glitch in a trading algorithm.

Kyle wants answers, and unless he gets them, he says, he will blow up Lee before killing himself. The police are notified, and they try to figure out a way to diffuse the bomb. Meanwhile, with the help of longtime director Patty Fenn (Julia Roberts), Lee tries to calm Kyle down and get him some answers. However, Camby is nowhere to be found, and Kyle is not satisfied when both Lee and Diane offer to compensate him for his financial loss.

The plot gets even more complicated, and I don’t want to give too much away. The film maintains its suspense while including some unexpected twists.

Racing against time, Lee and Patty use their resources to try to find out where Camby is and what’s behind the stock’s plummet. Diane also tries to find Camby and gains some information that challenges her commitment to the company.

Money Monster sets up some unrealistic situations and at times is heavy-handed about the corruption involved in our financial markets. But it also throws in some curve balls that alter our perception. Just as we’re ready to blame one evil man for not only Kyle’s problem but our own, the film confronts us with our own complicity in the way CEOs run their companies. We as stockholders tend to overlook these CEOs malfeasance when our stocks are making a profit, and we get upset when we learn about their misdeeds, especially when those lead to our losing money.

And the ending, which depicts the watching public’s fickleness, is superb. And Jodie Foster’s direction and the acting throughout is excellent.

Money Monster, rated R for language and some violence, is entertaining and includes some thought-provoking elements. But it’s not going to change many people’s behavior.

Lessons from New Zealand

Every experience carries with it the opportunity to learn new ways—or reinforce old ways—of living our lives as followers of Jesus Christ.

In late February and early March, Jeanne and I took part in our “trip of a lifetime” to New Zealand, which included a 13-day walking tour on the south island.

 

 

1. One step at a time, together: We did lots of hiking (what Kiwis, or New Zealanders, call tramping). Some of this involved covering what Kiwis call “gentle slopes” but feel pretty steep to a Kansas native. We walked every day, some treks longer than others. Over one two-day stretch, we walked about 22 miles over fairly rough terrain, with some steep switchbacks.

Our group consisted of 10 people, plus our guide, and another guide joined us at each location. The hikes were not hurried but were steady. We stopped to learn about plant and bird life. We conversed or simply walked in silence. We made it by putting one foot in front of another, not dwelling on how far we had to go but walking in the present moment.

Walking together provided an innate encouragement. We walked at different paces, but no one was left behind, and there was no judgment expressed toward those of us who walked slower.

2. Learning new perspectives: Although nine of our group members were from the United States and one from Britain, we brought different perspectives and experiences. We grew very close and were saddened to part company at the end of our tour.

Meeting new people is a reminder of the richness of human experience. We grow as we see the world with new eyes.

Being in a different country and culture brought its own learnings. New Zealand is a small country (only 4.5 million people) and has a different take on things from the U.S. empire’s perspective of dominance. We shared with the group the news about the shootings in Newton and Hesston, Kan. Our New Zealand guide and the British man simply said they did not understand the obsession with guns. Both their countries have strict gun laws and almost no gun deaths.

3. God’s beautiful, hurting world: We saw beautiful sights (ocean shores, rainforests, mountains, valleys) and were awestruck by God’s handiwork and the diversity in nature. We also learned about the effects of climate change. We saw glaciers that our guides told us were twice as large only 10 years ago.

Kiwis treasure their environment and are committed to caring for it as much as possible. If only we could do as well here.

Unlike my life here, we spent much of our time outdoors. We often forget that Jesus did as well. Yielding to the weather, rainy or dry, cold or warm, is an exercise in faith, living in reality.

4. Healthy habits: This trip reminded me of the importance of such healthy habits as walking regularly, being in nature, meeting new friends and gaining new perspectives.

As we walk our Christian life, we seek to do so fully aware of God’s presence with us. Walking under God’s sky among forests, mountains and shores was a helpful reminder of that.

An inspiring story of faith

Noble (PG-13) tells the dramatic true story of Christina Noble, who overcomes a harsh childhood in Ireland to give her life to helping abandoned children.

 

 

The film moves between scenes of Christina’s life growing up in Ireland and her arrival in Vietnam in 1989, 14 years after the end of the war. Different actors portray her as a child, as a young adult and as an older adult, arriving in Ho Chi Minh City with only a few dollars and unsure why she is even there. Years earlier, she has a dream about Vietnam, a country “she wouldn’t be able to show you on a map,” and it sticks with her.

Christina grows up in poverty in Dublin. Her mother dies when she’s young, and her father is an alcoholic who hits his wife. Christina is a talented singer and shows great resilience. When her father agrees to have her and her siblings removed from the home and sent to a Catholic orphanage, she escapes briefly and goes to a pub and sings. Captured, she endures harsh punishment from the nuns at the orphanage, which feels clichéd.

As a young adult, she is on her own and gets a job in a factory, where she meets a woman who becomes a close friend. She survives a gang rape (not shown), loses her job and is taken to a Catholic shelter. There she gives birth to a boy, who is taken from her and given up for adoption.

Later, she marries, has three children and finally leaves her abusive husband.

This litany of suffering is all back story to the amazing work she does later. Despite her experiences, she retains a faith in God. The film offers several scenes of her talking frankly to God, sometimes in a church, sometimes on her bed. While the film doesn’t dwell on her religious faith, it also doesn’t provide much explanation how she remains faithful, given all that life—and the church—has done to her. We’re supposed to just accept that this is how she is.

After she arrives in Vietnam, she notices children on the street and begins caring for them. One day, she happens by an orphanage and convinces the Vietnamese woman who runs it to let her work there.

Overcome by how many children are in need of care and protection, particularly from sex traffickers, she eventually convinces donors to give her funds, and she creates a ministry that has now reached hundreds of thousands of children throughout Asia.

Despite the description above of Christina’s life growing up, the film isn’t as hard-hitting as it might have been. It lacks the gritty realism that a film with better production values or a different director might have brought. This tamer approach, I imagine, is intentional, since the film is geared to a more conservative audience.

And while it is geared toward presenting a message of faith, it doesn’t feel heavy-handed. Christina is clearly a woman of faith, though it’s not clear how that happened. Inarguably, however, hers is an inspiring story.

Noble is available on DVD.

Truth is elusive in political talk

Amid the plethora of messages we encounter in our mediaculture—via the Internet, television, radio or other media—are those that spread lies. Often these lies are presented as facts; other times they are hoaxes meant to persuade readers of a particular political or other perspective.

We’re in the midst of a presidential campaign, and the claims and innuendos are abundant. And the true believers—those loyal supporters of each candidate—are convinced the person they support would never lie or misrepresent the truth.

When some nonpartisan fact-checking organization points out the falseness of a statement, it’s too late. People have moved on.

Cara Lombardo, in her article "Deconstructing the Rightwing Spin Machine" (The Progressive, February) offers an example. On Oct. 19 and 20, 2015, Sean Hannity told Fox News viewers that President Obama unilaterally decided that the United States was going to let in 250,000 refugees from Syria and other war-torn regions. Five days later, Donald Trump cited this figure in New Hampshire.

 

 

The claim, however, was completely false, Lombardo writes.

The fact-checking outlet PolitiFact traced the claim back to what appears to be a hoax article on a website called RealNewsRightNow. The article attributed the figure to a "Cathy Pieper" at the State Department. "We could find no Cathy Pieper working for the State Department," PolitiFact reported.

You can also check PolitiFact, which has won the Pulitzer Prize, for a list of 20 false statements by Hillary Clinton. Here are a few: "We now have more jobs in solar than we do in oil." "Every piece of legislation, just about, that I ever introduced (in the U.S. Senate) had a Republican co-sponsor." "We now have driven (health-care) costs down to the lowest they’ve been in 50 years."

False information can spread quickly. Following the Navy Yard shooting in 2013, writes Lombardo, "the far-right website Breitbart reported that guns are banned on military bases, suggesting that laxer laws may have saved lives." NRA member Ted Nugent repeated the claim on Twitter, and multiple Fox News contributors followed suit. The fact is that the rule does not ban all guns; one of the first Navy Yard victims was an armed security guard.

Politics has always drawn what Lombardo calls "strategic fibbing." For example, when Thomas Jefferson ran for president, a Connecticut newspaper cautioned that his victory would mean that "murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will openly be taught and practiced." A Jefferson supporter then said John Adams was a "repulsive pedant" who had sent his vice president overseas to bring back mistresses.

Lombardo quotes Lucas Graves, journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of the forthcoming book Deciding What’s True: The Fact-Checking Movement in American Journalism: "Some politicians will continue to make a claim as long as they think it’s useful, no matter what the mainstream media or experts say."

Thus for years certain politicians have questioned the legitimacy of President Obama’s birth certificate, a matter that was settled, and then settled again.

The truth is usually complex and nuanced—partly true or true sometimes. But most people want simple answers or statements, and those who offer the nuanced truth are often not elected.

Usually corrections to false claims come after the claims have been disseminated. And, Graves says, "Even when presented with new information, people tend to stick to what they have heard."

The wonder and glory of the human

The Givenness of Things: Essays by Marilynne Robinson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015, $26, 292 pages)

 

 

Marilynne Robinson is that rare example of a writer who excels as a novelist and an essayist. And the qualities that make her fiction so good—the precise delineation of characters, beautiful language and intelligence—apply to her nonfiction as well.

Her fifth book of nonfiction is a collection of 17 essays originally delivered, sometimes in different form, as lectures. She favors one-word titles, a description that applies to all four of her novels and all but one of these essays.

The first essay, “Humanism,” lays out a theme that recurs throughout the book: the wonder and glory of the human. She presents this as a counterpoint to how we tend to treat one another. Although “the spirit of the times is one of joyless urgency,” she writes, “we have as good grounds for exulting in human brilliance as any generation that has ever lived.”

And while she freely acknowledges humanity’s destructive tendencies, she places her humanism in the context of faith. “Our ontological worthiness,” she writes, is “in relationship with God.”

Robinson shows that she reads widely, as knowledgeable about science and history as she is about theology and literature. And she is unafraid to offer her critique of people’s faulty thinking in either area. She calls scientists’ insistence of the category “physical” absurd, an error of logic.

“I find the soul a valuable concept,” she writes, “a statement of the dignity of a human life and of the unutterable gravity of human action and experience.” Meanwhile, she argues, “neuroscience, at least in its dominant forms, greatly overreaches the implications of its evidence and is tendentious.”

She freely admits her own bias as a theist, which she recognizes goes against materialism, “a discipline of exclusive attention to the reality that can be tested by scientists.” While acknowledging the usefulness of this approach, she writes, “the greatest proof of its legitimacy is that it has found its way to its own limits.”

In another essay, “Givenness,” she makes a similar point: “Scientific reductionism, good in its place, is very often used to evade the great fact of complexity.”

In the same essay, she goes on to compare faith with disbelief: “Faith takes its authority from subjective experience, from an inward sense of the substance of meaning of experience. The same is true of disbelief, no doubt. Objective proof cannot be claimed on either side.”

In her emphasis on humanity’s dignity, Robinson often criticizes our current denigration of one another. She laments the rise of “cultural pessimism,” which she defines as “bitter hostility toward many or most of the people within the very culture the pessimists always feel they are intent on rescuing.”

Robinson notes that “the writer most widely read in England while Shakespeare wrote was the French theologian John Calvin.” She is a huge fan of Calvin, whom she references in nearly every essay and quotes often. She does not mention his involvement in persecuting Anabaptists, however.

Calvin convinces her of the importance of human fallibility. Yet, Robinson writes, “I wouldn’t mind hearing the word ‘sin’ once in a while. If the word is spoken now it is likely to be in one of those lately bold and robust big churches who are obsessed with sins Jesus never mentioned at all. On the testimony of the prophets, social injustice is the great sin.”

She often criticizes a Christianity that is “rooted in an instinctive tribalism.” Christianity’s true nature, in contrast, “has no boundaries, no shibboleths, no genealogies or hereditary claimants.” This tribal Christianity is false and goes against the teachings of the Bible, she writes. “Does the word ‘stranger,’ the word ‘alien,’ ever have a negative connotation in Scripture? No. Are the poor ever the object of anything less than God’s loving solicitude? No.”

She also writes often about Shakespeare, noting that “[his] theological seriousness is simultaneous with his greatness as a dramatist.” In the essay “Grace” she concludes that Shakespeare “proposes that we participate in grace, in the largest sense of the word, as we experience love, in the largest sense of that word.”

At the opposite end of love is fear, the title of another essay. Robinson makes two points: “Contemporary America is full of fear,” and “fear is not a Christian habit of mind.” She does not mince words in her criticism of those who profess to be Christians: “Those who forget God, the single assurance of our safety, however that word may be defined, can be recognized in the fact that they make irrational responses to irrational fears.”

Robinson is free and unafraid in laying out her opinions, which many will not like. In “Proofs” she quotes Karl Barth, who said that “Christianity that excludes the Old Testament has a cancer at its heart.” In “Memory” she writes, “True and utter cowardice is defined by the act of carrying a concealed weapon.” And further: “If Christianity is thought of as a religion of personal salvation that allows one to sin now and repent at leisure, it is … almost limitlessly permissive. It virtually invites the flouting of Jesus’ teachings.”

In “Value,” she turns to economics and justice: “If bankers wrecked the economy, what sense does it make to drug-test the unemployed who need help surviving the wreck?”

In “Theology” she critiques rationalism: “The rationalists are like travelers in a non-English-speaking country who think they can make themselves understood by shouting.”

In the same essay she goes on to describe how she comes to write a novel: “I find my way into it by finding a voice that can tell it, and then it unfolds within the constraints of its own nature, which seem arbitrary to me but are inviolable by me.”

Robinson addresses other subjects: economic inequality, the English Reformation, education, metaphysics, religion and more.

In “Realism,” the concluding essay in this volume, Robinson returns to the theme of human worth: “We know how profoundly we can impoverish ourselves by failing to find value in one another….A theology of grace is a higher realism, an ethics of truth. Writers know this.”

“The Givenness of Things” is a rich source of thought and provocation. Robinson’s interests are wide and her intelligence keen. Reading her is a rewarding experience.

The human face of evil

We are inundated by news of the atrocities of ISIS and other jihadist groups, and many Americans live in an often misguided fear of Muslims. We tend to view these Islamic militants as monsters.

Abderrahmane Sissako’s outstanding film Timbuktu paints a different portrait by showing the complex humanity of his characters.

 

 

This French-Mauritanian film, which originally came out in 2014 but only came to the United States this year, takes its name from the cosmopolitan city in Mali that draws people from many places and where many languages are spoken. It takes place during an occupation of the city by Islamists bearing a jihadist black flag.

The film opens with a group of jihadists chasing a small antelope across the desert in a land rover, shooting their guns to scare it into submission. This becomes one of many symbols for the reality many people find themselves in.

Soon, in the village, we witness people’s quiet resistance to these thugs, who use a loudspeaker to announce silly laws: Women must wear socks. No music is allowed. Most of the resistance comes from women. A woman selling fish in the marketplace refuses to wear gloves, pointing out how ridiculous such a rule is. “Go ahead, cut off my hands now,” she tells them. They back away.

Another woman, who has moved to Timbuktu from Haiti after she lost everything in 2010, walks boldly through the village without socks and laughs at the soldiers. They get out of her way.

The local imam explains to several jihadists that his own jihad (the word means “struggle”) is with himself, to better himself in service to Allah.

Three of the soldiers argue with each other about who is the best soccer player in the world, even though sports are not permitted. They take a soccer ball from a local boy. Later we see a group of boys playing soccer without a ball, illustrating the power of imagination. When the jihadists show up, they stop playing and pretend to do exercises.

The film feels comedic at this point, but soon we witness the stoning to death of a couple charged with adultery. This scene is based on an actual event, a 2012 public stoning of an unmarried couple in Aguelhok. Another woman receives 40 lashes for singing and 40 lashes for being in the same room as a man not of her family.

Another story line involves a family that lives in a tent outside the city. Kidane is a cattle herder who loves his 12-year-old daughter, Toya. He gets into a fight with a fisherman who killed one of Kidane’s cows for damaging his fishing net. Kidane accidentally shoots him. The Islamists arrest Kidane and, per sharia law, demand a blood money payment of 40 cattle to the fisherman’s family. Since he only has seven cattle, he is sentenced to death.

Sissako’s film is a poetic tribute to people living in a difficult situation. It is beautifully shot and shows the quiet faith of some of the people. It also portrays the jihadists as humans who are misguided and more interested in power than in religion.

Timbuktu is that rare film that is both disturbing and inspiring. While it depicts some characters’ resignation to fate, it also shows the power of free will in resisting the evil of oppression by the jihadists.

The film is rated PG-13 and is available on DVD.

The human face of evil

We are inundated by news of the atrocities of ISIS and other jihadist groups, and many Americans live in an often misguided fear of Muslims. We tend to view these Islamic militants as monsters.

Abderrahmane Sissako’s outstanding film Timbuktu paints a different portrait by showing the complex humanity of his characters.

 

 

This French-Mauritanian film, which originally came out in 2014 but only came to the United States this year, takes its name from the cosmopolitan city in Mali that draws people from many places and where many languages are spoken. It takes place during an occupation of the city by Islamists bearing a jihadist black flag.

The film opens with a group of jihadists chasing a small antelope across the desert in a land rover, shooting their guns to scare it into submission. This becomes one of many symbols for the reality many people find themselves in.

Soon, in the village, we witness people’s quiet resistance to these thugs, who use a loudspeaker to announce silly laws: Women must wear socks. No music is allowed. Most of the resistance comes from women. A woman selling fish in the marketplace refuses to wear gloves, pointing out how ridiculous such a rule is. “Go ahead, cut off my hands now,” she tells them. They back away.

Another woman, who has moved to Timbuktu from Haiti after she lost everything in 2010, walks boldly through the village without socks and laughs at the soldiers. They get out of her way.

The local imam explains to several jihadists that his own jihad (the word means “struggle”) is with himself, to better himself in service to Allah.

Three of the soldiers argue with each other about who is the best soccer player in the world, even though sports are not permitted. They take a soccer ball from a local boy. Later we see a group of boys playing soccer without a ball, illustrating the power of imagination. When the jihadists show up, they stop playing and pretend to do exercises.

The film feels comedic at this point, but soon we witness the stoning to death of a couple charged with adultery. This scene is based on an actual event, a 2012 public stoning of an unmarried couple in Aguelhok. Another woman receives 40 lashes for singing and 40 lashes for being in the same room as a man not of her family.

Another story line involves a family that lives in a tent outside the city. Kidane is a cattle herder who loves his 12-year-old daughter, Toya. He gets into a fight with a fisherman who killed one of Kidane’s cows for damaging his fishing net. Kidane accidentally shoots him. The Islamists arrest Kidane and, per sharia law, demand a blood money payment of 40 cattle to the fisherman’s family. Since he only has seven cattle, he is sentenced to death.

Sissako’s film is a poetic tribute to people living in a difficult situation. It is beautifully shot and shows the quiet faith of some of the people. It also portrays the jihadists as humans who are misguided and more interested in power than in religion.

Timbuktu is that rare film that is both disturbing and inspiring. While it depicts some characters’ resignation to fate, it also shows the power of free will in resisting the evil of oppression by the jihadists.

The film is rated PG-13 and is available on DVD.