Ahistorical and proud of it, or how this film fails its viewers
Remarkable, I've yet to see a film more ahistorical than this. Fictional African country? Well of course, that's because actual history completely invalidates Denis' views and by extension the film's views. This film is of course in actuality set during The Great War of Africa or the Second Congo War and Rwandan genocide, or rather, pretends to be about this seemingly unintelligible conflict.
Except, it IS intelligible. It CAN be understood, contrary to everything every lazy Western journalist ever wrote about it. What happened from 1990s onwards was a direct result of European and especially Belgian colonialism and neo-colonial greed. See, the Belgians starting from the 19th century well into the 20th century, used "divide and rule" and created racial myths about the Hutus and Tutsis, two tribes who had for centuries lived peacefully together as far back as anyone could remember, intermarried, and considered each other like brothers and sisters. Until the Belgians arrived.
So the Belgian colonials who wanted to divide and rule, concocted fake histories about Tutsis supposedly being some sort of "master race" descended from Egyptians, and Hutus supposedly being an "inferior race". These racial myths were then taught in classes, and even reinforced through racial pseudo-science (that would later be adopted by the Nazis), and it wasn't long before people actually started believing them. Meanwhile Belgium became incredibly rich from Congo's mineral wealth, and Belgians, especially the Belgian royal family of King Leopold II enjoyed nothing more than to hunt Africans like animals and cut off their heads as trophies. And Belgians appointed Tutsis positions in their colonial government and colonial enterprises. Everything went exactly as planned, and once more, an African region was robbed to enrich a few rich white elites.
In the 1950s, with independence becoming inevitable, Belgian liberals started to feel guilty about what they had done to the people of Congo, and so decided that in order to "balance things out" they would now stop backing Tutsis and start a Hutu uprising against them, thereby ensuring that Congo would remain a failed state for decades, possibly centuries to come. As if that wasn't enough, after independence, in 1961 Belgium assassinated the first democratically elected president of DR Congo, Patrice Lumumba. Belgium killed Lumumba because he had the "audacity" to proclaim that "the soil of our country should really benefit its children". A situation ensued from which the West, mainly Belgian and French companies, then profited immensely. Again.
Fast forward to 1998; Western mining conglomerates such as Union Minière du Haut Katanga (now Umicore N.V.) are now the de facto rulers of DR Congo, mining for diamonds, precious minerals such as gold and coltan (Columbine-Tantalite) that fuel the tech boom and make it possible for everyone to have a Playstation and a mobile phone. By now, the fake racial myths that the Belgians invented had turned into "established truth" and the slightest provocation would turn it into full blown mass slaughter. So it did. And the West completely and utterly ignored it until it was too late and the Rwandan genocide was a fact. Mining conglomerates dug in with their violent and well-armed militias to control as much territory as possible, and neighbouring African states, who had turned into failed states themselves (again due to colonialism and neo-colonialism such as the modern "Françafrique") saw their chance to conquer valuable mining territory. Between 1998 and 2003 alone, 5.5 million people lost their lives, and some fighting continues to this day, fueled not by tribalism but the Western mining conglomerates' merciless capitalism.
When the West finally began to take notice, both the news media and "real journalists" suddenly had no idea what caused it. And they didn't even try to find out. In fact, they seemingly never did. To this day, the Great War of Africa is portrayed as an example of "senseless African barbarism", or "senseless tribalism", or "senseless backwardness". Which could, quite literally, not be further from the truth.
And it is in that tradition of dangerous Western ignorance, that this film falls into. Not content to be ignorant of these matters, the West has begun to construct their own little fantasy African history narrative, framed in such a way as to be ignorant and forgetful of (even recent) history, and especially so of the parts they play in it. And of course this is beneficial to Western mining interests and their state shareholders, and all are none the wiser.
Many reviews for this film are not even at all alarmed by this, and in fact seem to embrace how the film's ahistorical and non-existent "fictional African country" seems to "be so representative of things happening in Africa" (!). It's not. It tells the viewer in fact so little, that it just feeds into Western (and increasingly global) disinterest and ignorance of history. "White Material" portrays a place that, for no discernible reasons other than being an African country, just spirals into death. Who cares what caused it; what matters (apparently) is a character study of this insane white protagonist. "Fictional African country" going through "senseless genocide" is nothing more than a theatrical backdrop, and the film is all the poorer for it.
Those ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it. I would've expected a film-maker like Denis to be more intelligent than this and not make a film that not only fails to express anything meaningful, but does succeed in keeping the masses ignorant, and in this of all issues.
To Denis and all filmmakers I'd like to say: if you make a film in or about Africa that deals with (even the smallest bit of) history and (even the smallest bit of) politics; please do your homework. It's not hard. It makes the difference between a movie for entertainment (arthouse or not) and a real film. It makes all the difference in the world. When everything is corrupted by greed, only art remains to tell the truth. Artists are supposed to use lies to tell the truth, not use the truth to tell lies.
Sources for those interested:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_War_of_Africa
https://encrypted.google.com/#q=all+watched+over+by+machines+of+loving +grace&tbm=vid
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_G race_%28TV_series%29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Mini%C3%A8re_du_Haut_Katanga
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francafrique
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_colonialism#Congo
http://www.neurope.eu/article/belgium-still-calls-shots-congo
PS. And in case you were wondering, Union Minière/Umicore are doing better than ever! A former Belgian prime-minister sits on their board, the European Commission has appointed Umicore representative Christian Hagelüken to an “expert minerals group”, Umicore export billions and billions out of Congo and the wider region every year (yet somehow the DR Congo government only collects a few million in taxes on that) and their PR re-branding and whitewashing campaign has succeeded so brilliantly they are even now considered to be (by the Washington Post) "amongst the 100 most sustainable companies" (a PR-façade that is so utterly laughable and falls apart under such minute scrutiny I would be insulting your, dear reader's intelligence by even going into it).