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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
WHITE MATERIAL
Joseph Conrad’s literary fable describes the ivory trader Kurtz as a man equally as dug in as Maria and who eventually loses touch with his white European identity, but Denis sees native relations in a very different way. Kurtz blends into the scenery and actually “goes native,” while Maria and her family look and feel rather like a splinter—an invasive foreign body that will never reconcile with its host. Every movement Maria makes is laborious, as proven in Huppert’s committed and equally savvy performance, and every decision that the others in her weak and disintegrating family members make ill informed. Note her son Manuel’s nervous breakdown—a modest, warped variation of going native in which he shaves his head, removes his clothes, and wanders the countryside—and its embarrassing (and dangerous) outcome. This is no morality tale about the sketchy implications of fraternizing with the locals. Denis has come a long way from her 1988 debut Chocolat. There’s very little universalism here, but rather a specific cause and effect scenario. It’s a sharply planned lesson in the grim reality of cultural exploitation and the results of continuing the patriarchal patterns laid out by preceding generations. Denis’s unique storytelling often forgoes continuity editing, traditional framing, or expositional dialogue. It’s one where every frame and every sound shift the awareness of the viewer in a particular direction, eventually coalescing into a recognizable story. We wonder the meaning of specific shots, and even scenes, until later on when the initial feelings resurface. Denis combines an audience’s sense of loss, mistrust, and danger, without being explicit. The style lends itself perfectly to White Material, a film that requires its audience to feel as abused as Maria, or at times as confused as her son. This is a filmmaker who relies on an audience’s ability to feel things in order to understand them, and each of her films reinforces this method. As she’s
fond of doing, Denis surprises us with the ending. As an audience,
though, we have been diligently and emotionally prepared. In this case,
the patriarch’s story line, one that’s been lost throughout the mayhem of
Maria’s shattered world, re-emerges, and at first the conclusion may
feel abrupt. On further contemplation, don’t be surprised if you have
second thoughts. I’m putting it to viewers to consider the meaning when
the otherwise passive Henri becomes integral to the final scene. Denis
has, though certainly not explicitly, imbued this film with the theme
of the white man’s hierarchy, and keeping this in mind, the climax will
feel less like a surprise and actually should give a sense of
completion.
Michael Lee
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White Material is the opposite of Heart of
Darkness. In the former, Isabelle Huppert plays plantation heir Maria Vial, a savvy
neo-colonialist scrambling amidst a civil conflict in a contemporary
unidentified African country. Her ailing family includes
her ineffective politicking former husband (Christophe Lambert); their
spoiled, bipolar, grown son (Nicolas Duvauchelle); and Maria’s
manipulative ex-father-in-law, Henri (Michel Subor), by now past his
prime. The degradation that chews away at a family isolated from their
European base is painfully apparent, and despite Maria’s head for
business (read: survival) in the hostile environment, outside forces prove too much for her and the farm.
In a kind of rebel solidarity, impromptu militias roam the
countryside with little or no leadership (a la Johnny Mad Dog, or
Munyurangabo), threatening
murder and making the day-to-day operations of the Vial coffee plantation
increasingly difficult, though ultimately the militants are hesitant to
destroy outright any and all white-owned businesses.