| |
By Lisa Allardice, The Guardian: Original
Article
In a nameless country somewhere in Africa, two leaders
belonging to different ethnic groups meet to sign a peace
treaty after a decade of slaughter between their peoples.
At the height of the reconciliatory dinner, one of the
men is seized and spit-roasted over an open fire by a
woman seeking to avenge the death of her young son. This
is the grim climax toThe Night of Truth, the first full-length
feature film from acclaimed African director Fanta Regina
Nacro.
The country may be fictional, and the characters invented,
but this grotesque scene is all too real. Nacro's adored
uncle, a soldier in Burkina Faso, suffered the same terrible
fate. "He died in exactly the way shown in the film:
they dug a hole, they started a fire, they put him over
it, they marinated him and they cooked him for over 12
hours," says Nacro matter-of-factly. "What is
strange is that people who see the film think that the
barbecue scene is something invented, exaggerated - but
that is exactly what happened to my uncle."
It was not so much the story of her uncle's murder - "that
in itself is not interesting" - as the macabre manner
of his death that led her to think about questions of
atrocity as the basis for a film. To mirror the full horror
of his ordeal, the action is confined, more or less, to
a period of 12 hours. "From that comes the idea of
unity of place and unity of time - which leads to the
Shakespearean model of theatre."
Indeed, in this story of a flawed hero tormented by his
past crimes, and a woman driven to insanity by a desire
for revenge, there are unmistakable Shakespearean influences,
most obviously Macbeth and Hamlet. Nacro set out to show
"that all humans have their dark side and their human
side, and that if one is not vigilant then the dark side
can easily take over". The title of the film, The
Night of Truth, "refers to that moment when the individual
discovers their true self, their interior self".
It is impossible to watch the film without drawing immediate
parallels with the genocide in Rwanda. But, unlike two
recent award-winning films, Hotel Rwanda and Shooting
Dogs, or Gil Courtemanche's harrowing novel A Sunday at
the Pool in Kigali, The Night of Truth approaches the
subject of civil conflict in more general terms. "To
make a universal statement, it was important to go beyond
a particular location - people would say, 'That's what
you expect, they are barbaric, that is how "other"
people behave.' Whereas if it is universalised, then you
can't put it to one side in the same way," Nacro
explains.
Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan or the Ivory Coast, all these
countries - as well as Armenia, Chechnya and contemporary
Israel - played a part in her vision for the film. But,
perhaps more surprisingly, her overriding inspiration
was the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. "Yugoslavia was
the point of departure in the sense that the testimonies
and reports of atrocities, in particular in cases of women
being raped and having acid poured into their vaginas,
women being made to watch the murder of their families
and husbands, that provoked my thinking about atrocities
in more general terms. After the war in Yugoslavia, I
hoped that the whole world would realise this kind of
violence is not restricted to the peoples of Africa."
Burkina Faso has been christened "the land of the
cinema" as it hosts Fespaco, Africa's largest film
festival. But the 42-year-old Nacro is a rare voice in
Burkina: she is one of less than a handful of women directors
in the whole continent. She calls herself "a director
of African origin". In a career spanning more than
20 years, she has made 17 short films and been awarded
as many prizes.
Shot in Burkina over a period of 8 weeks, often with hand-held
cameras on 35mm film, using a combination of professional
actors and real soldiers, and with only the sound of insects
as a score, the film is at once grimly realistic and fable-like.
There is none of the romanticisation of the landscape
and the people, typical of so many non-African films set
in Africa: shimmering horizons and smouldering sunsets
are replaced by gloomy interiors and leaden skies. Even
the outdoor scenes feel unnervingly claustrophobic. This
is deliberate. "I had long struggles with my cinematographer,"
Nacro says, "to get him not to look for the perfect
shot, the perfect light, the beautifully composed image
- because that was not what I needed. What I wanted was
the reality of things, to capture the immediacy of things
even if they weren't beautiful."
There is very little beauty here. As one of the soldiers
says, "the dead are everywhere". Images of violence
recur with an ugly insistence. Disturbingly, for a squeamish
western audience desensitised to screen violence, lingering
shots of characters gorging on grubs can seem almost as
repellent as those of dismembered body parts. Much is
made of food as a symbol of difference and acceptance
throughout. In the crucial party scene, the two leaders
share a meal together, each tentatively prepared to try
each other's speciality dishes - snake and caterpillar.
Nacro admits that she chose these "delicacies"
for their shock value - "but they are authentic foods
that one might eat, presented in order to create an effect.
The reaction that people have to eating caterpillars is
no different from mine on first seeing gorgonzola with
little green bits in it."
Fair enough. But in insisting on these - to western sensibilities,
at least - more unsavoury details, as well as the extreme
barbarity of the violence, is there not a danger of reinforcing,
as much as challenging, stereotypes of Africa as the dark
continent, a place of savage, uncivilised peoples? Not
at all, Nacro says passionately. For her it is not about
addressing a western or African audience, but driving
home the acceptance of difference, regardless of colour.
"Wherever I've shown the film - whether in San Sebastian,
in France, Palestine or in the United States, or even
at the Cambridge film festival - the audience's reaction
has been to find something in it that mirrors their own
experiences. People have started watching it as if it
were simply an African film, and then slowly, with the
development of the story, they start to think about their
own difficulties of resolving conflict."
Before going to film school, Nacro wanted to become a
midwife, so she could travel - at least as far as the
Ivory Coast. Today, her career has taken her all round
the world and earned her international accolades. Now,
with this disturbing, but ultimately hopeful, story of
truth and reconciliation she is looking to reach as big
an audience as possible. If The Night of Truth were to
reach a wider public and "wake them up"- that,
she says, would "take me to seventh heaven".
The psychological snarls that result from years of genocidal
civil war are impressively dramatized and crafted into
a shocking parable in Fanta Regina Nacro's tyro feature,
The Night of Truth. Further evidence of the strong film
community supported in Burkina Faso, the film represents
one of the better cases in recent African cinema of a
writer-director with some experience (Nacro has 17 shorts
and documentaries to her credit) using a cast to flesh
out roles that are unabashedly Shakespearean.
The smoke has cleared, but acrid bitterness hangs in the
air after a years-long war between the governing Nayak
and rebel Bonande tribes in an unnamed African nation.
Nacro establishes early on a panoply of emotional states,
from the brewing vengefulness of Edna (Naky Sy Savane),
wife of Le President (Adama Ouedraougo), whose son was
viciously killed during an especially grisly rampage,
to Nayak supporter Tomoto (Rasmane Ouedraogo), who is
this drama's Fool and loose cannon.
Wedged between these extremes and seeking reconciliation
are Le President himself, his seemingly reasonable Bonande
counterpart Colonel Theo (Commandant Moussa Cisse) and
his wife Soumari (Georgette Pare), whose belief in peace
seems naive, given the history of atrocities each side
has visited on the other.
In classic fashion that follows the art of playwriting,
Nacro carefully establishes each major character and their
case, and then brings them together for a peace-and-reconciliation
dinner party. The confab is itself a great act of faith,
since, when the picture finally reveals glimpses of the
horrific bloodshed of the war -- the landscape is scattered
with body parts -- it seems a miracle the two sides would
be able to speak to each other. It's indeed too good to
be true, and the dread of this reality hangs over each
moment of the party like a slowly dropping guillotine
blade.
Tension is almost unbearable, and the notion of casting
such complex and intense roles with non-pros would seem
to be folly. Ouedraougo, Cisse, Savane and Pare may be
new to the camera (all of the film's men are actually
members of the Burkina Faso army), but they pour a wealth
of passionate conviction into people torn between love
and hate. The ghosts of characters from "Othello,"
"Richard III," "Hamlet" and "Antony
and Cleopatra" hover about, to the film's benefit.
The physical sharpness of this Francophone production
shouldn't detract from the fact that, pricey technical
tools notwithstanding, Nacro has a fine eye for intimate
drama and for finding the universal in the particular.
Her final shot, over closing credits, of a classroom of
kids, post war, brilliantly concludes things on a positive
note.
Back
|
|
