Has Anyone Seen This Film?
Has Anyone Seen This Film?
It looks amazing. If you've seen it, what did you think of it and why?
I really want to see it. I love Isabelle Huppert.
Thanks,
- Samuel
Has Anyone Seen This Film?
It looks amazing. If you've seen it, what did you think of it and why?
I really want to see it. I love Isabelle Huppert.
Thanks,
- Samuel
I'm really very lucky, all you guy's are discussing "another great film I'll never see" and you live in big cities across the pond that I've heard of ...... I live near the small Welsh town of Cardigan ( population about 10,000) and I have just been to see this very powerful and moving film at my local Cinema. All the main characters are lying to each other about what they sorta know is happening and meanwhile the tension continues to build up. First the rebels and then the army come. It's a great film, slowly moving like most French films. Gives you a lot to think about. Huppert is remarkable.
shareI sure wish I could see this, it looks like a true masterpiece..
Do you guys feel the same?
I do feel the same. I was lucky enough to find a site online that lets you watch it streaming to your computer! Most sites make you sign up or something, but this one doesn't.
There is no English subtitles on this site, but it was amazing.
Let me know if you want me to shoot you a link to it.
I'm always happy to share with fellow film lovers.
I had the very good fortune to see this at the Music Box in Chicago. Expectations run high when Claire Denis is at work, and White Material does not disappoint. Anxiety and foreboding pervade within a complex but clear narrative structure. A powerful tale sans heroes, villains, types or the usual reductive signposts. Isabelle Huppert is superb.
Mark Deming is spot on at All Movie Guide:
http://www.allmovie.com/work/white-material-499057/review
Highly recommended.
Spot-on is right. This review said it better than anyone else could. thanks for the link.
shareMaria is the only sane person of the entire bunch, operating outside of the nexus of power, privilege, arrogance, and violence the reviewer assigned to her.
Maria is the antithesis of the White Colonialist. She's pure, she's not racist, she has 100% trust and faith in everyone around her regardless of their skin colour, she didn't sweat when she worked, and she had a deep spiritual and intimate connection with the landscape, the inner richness she soaked up from the landscape and the physical work and the camaraderie with her workers and what she perceived as their unconditional acceptance of her was of far greater importance and worth to her than material wealth (including wealth derived from the coffee, which wasn't even much, based on the shabby state of the farm). She was not just fighting to keep the farm, she was fighting to remain in Africa: she was born on that land and raised on that land and had a child who grew into a man on that land and she refused to allow anyone to rip her off that land. She was indigenous to Africa, she was nurtured by the fruits of Africa, she refused to be terrorized into fleeing not just her homeland, but a homeland that she perceived accepted her as unconditionally as she accepted it. She wasn't an enemy to anyone, she was part of the land and of the people and of Africa. She treated people equally and unconditionally, but in the end, the people did not treat her with the same equanimity, the people, including her own son, preferred to terrorize and pillage her simply because she was white material.
She refused to be bullied and terrorized off her soil, she was well-aware of the danger and chose to resist the danger and the terror by plowing forward with her daily life and losing herself in work, because, like Anne Frank, she believed that people were really good at heart and would not resort to destroying her since she chose to resist destroying them.
Some people were infuriated with her because she was white, some because she was a landowner, some because she was refusing to take up weapons and fight, some were infuriated because she was refusing to do what they were too scared to do: speak for Africa by standing her ground and resisting violence and using diplomacy and a pledge of wealth to resolve issues, some because she was any combination or all of these things.
Her ex-husband, son, the mayor, her workers, her father, the militias, they were trapped in the nexus of power and privilege and arrogance and violence. She eschewed it all for the land and people she thought accepted her unconditionally.
The mayor even tells her that the people would never trust her completely because she was white material, which symbolically means Africa would never accept her completely because she represents White Colonialism. Claire Denis making the victims racist and the victimizers discriminated against.
The failure here is [Black] Africa failing to speak for itself. Remember the scene with the Gold lighter (spark of life, fire in the heart, but coated in Gold....fire corrupted by Western Wealth, Gold Lust igniting all the destruction wrought in Africa), the Boxer scrutinizes the lighter and asks where it's from, and when told it comes from the farm, he immediately tosses it to another armed resistance fighter, not wanting it anywhere near him, and the fighter trivializes its value by saying it's only white material. But the Boxer's reaction said it all - a complete rejection of the West and all of its trappings, including a complete distrust of anything connected to White people, even a seemingly harmless lighter. The Boxer's decision that something from the White World either had no worth or was the cause for all the destruction on the planet simply because it was from the White World. The Boxer's question was the only dialogue he delivered, his only concern whether or not to trust something based on surface appearances. The Boxer, the symbol of the rebellion and of Africa, infected and trapped by the same discriminatory mentality as the White Colonialists, such an important character who failed to speak for Africa in the way he needed to speak, and he perished without further ado, an omen that Africa too is perishing without further ado. It's the failure of Africa to stand up and stand firm like Maria.
And what about that gold lighter? What lit the flames of hatred and violence more, white material or that African radio deejay spreading his venom?
If Maria was dark-skinned, nobody would call her arrogant or stubborn or power-tripping or money-hungry or stupid or delusional for standing her ground. But because she's white, she's blindly judged as a White Colonialist exploiting Africa for material greed, even when the director makes it clear this woman was indigenous to Africa.
What do you say about, for example, Palestinians who refuse to be bulldozed off their farms in the West Bank, or Palestinians who refuse to abandon their homes when the IDF conduct military operations in their neighbourhoods, and they conduct protests - violent and non-violent - right in front of tanks and other IDF military installations? That type of resistance is okay because they're dark-skinned and thus by default they're native to the land and have every right to resist? Whereas Maria is white therefore has no claim to Africa and has no right to stand her ground and defend her Africa in her own way?
Everybody played a part in the evil on display only because they were all born into it. I would argue there was no evil on display, only a passion for ending the evil that already existed and pervaded everything, evil an independent entity, and how the passion evolved into various complex levels of mental instability, and insanity. Maria chose to stand firm in her passion for Africa, while everybody's passion crumbled into resignation, greed, vengeance, bloodlust, insanity, etc.
If anything, Maria does not understand the situation in its fullest political sense, and that's not denial or arrogance or stubbornness, it's being apolitical, and unfortunately that changes at the end (unfortunate, because being apolitical means she's approaching the situation pure of heart and highly objective, with no hidden agenda and no biases). Maria walking back to the plantation in the garish light of day, the next shot nighttime and the farm burnt down, a mental shift of day into night representing her thought process shifting from "I will not be bullied off my land" to "whiteys created this mess, I've tired of it, down with the whiteys!"
As the reviewer correctly pinpointed, the film is too cryptic to point fingers at the root of the evil on display, but that may well be the point, an observation that ironically negates his [mis]characterization of Maria, a characterization that indirectly places blame for much of what occurs on her ("folly of her actions"), and by extension, the folly of the white world's actions, because Maria is also the embodiment of the Western World's approach towards Africa since apartheid: investment in developing agricultural self-reliance, reliance on apolitical diplomacy, and disapproval towards all armed rebellions. And she's doubly to blame because she's created a son who represents a new "insane"/"white guilt" phase of the post-colonial approach: providing unlimited and unconditional humanitarian aid even if the people you're aiding are just as worse as the oppressors and even if they squander the aid, and actively call for and cheer on and even participate in armed rebellions, even if the rebellers are just as worse as the oppressors.
As Denis has portrayed and the reviewer pinpointed, whiteys are not the only people to blame here. The enslavement of Africa began long before whiteys stepped foot on her shores.
Not as good as other Claire Denis films, Huppert is fing brilliant
shareWhich of Denis' films do you consider better?
I've only seen this and Chocolate. I'm interested in seeing more fo her stuff, but I am not sure what is good.
I think Beau Travail is her best work to date. Chocolate may be a close second in my opinion. I also recommend Trouble Everyday if you're looking for that weird art house horror / love story. 35 Shots of Rum and Friday Night are great too but my least favourite of her films.
I just saw White Material yesterday and I thought it was one of her most interesting movies but never reaches the brilliance of Beau Travail or Chocolat but the film making is just as powerful.
ENOUGH from the clown!!!!!!!!
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I admit this isn't my type of move, I only got it because Christophe Lambert is in it. I really hate pretentious pieces of Euro-garbage like this. I will give credit though, it makes you hate everyone involved in Cameroon.
shareYou expecting maybe something along the lines of Fortress or Mortal Kombat?
ce n'est pas une image juste, c'est juste une image