Christ, I hated this. I am 75 percent I understood it--white entitlement and delusion in the face of an unknown and angry foreign culture (shot of Isabelle Huppert in a nice dress, shot of Africans yelling and/or suffering, shot of Isabelle Huppert in a nice dress, shot of Africans yelling and/or suffering, repeat, repeat)--but 100 percent sure I found the experience insufferable. Several of the positive elements--deeply moving imagery of child soldiers, Stuart S. Staples' hypnotic score--are undercut by the film's puzzle-esque structure. I was often too busy trying and failing to connect certain basic dots (who is this person? wait, is he her...father? is this before or after or during the other scene... wait, wait!) to embrace the film's quiet-but-tense "groove." And then there's the matter of the main character's lazy son, played by Nicolas Duvauchelle, who goes commando-batshit-insane after being intimdated by two young Africans. This subplot, so essential in the final minutes, is hilariously underdeveloped during the rest of the film, as if they only had Duvauchelle on set for a few days and couldn't shoot any more scenes to establish and explore his character's mental state. Just...ugh. This movie just didn't gel for me.

I know, I know, I'm too M.O.R. to embrace such brilliant insights into post-colonial Africa, this is pure cinema, etc., etc. Maybe true. Still: D

M.O.R.?

Middle-of-the-road.

Well, you're certainly something if you give this a D and shit like Alice in Wonderland an A-.

Such a dishonest remark. Anyone, surely yourself included (yes, even you, trixster, the smartest person to ever turn on a computer), can be discredited when you play the game of comparing reactions to completely separate films with completely different intents.

You brought it on yourself by writing such a condescending review.

A film this perversely in love with its own sense of importance (honestly not very different from Hollywood's frequently criticized trips to wartorn Africa, such as Blood Diamond, just a lot more stylistically precious and less emotionally involving) deserves a bit of condescension. Couldn't hurt, at least.

I think you totally missed the point of the movie, then.

What was it then? I even admitted in my condescending review I may not have entirely understood the film.

The way I see it, Huppert is the European who has been in Africa so long--running her business, giving birth to her son--she feels entitled to the land. She feels she's a part of the fabric now and doesn't want to face the facts when the country violently turns against her and itself. Tragic fire ensues.

As far as I can see, this is yet another one of those movies where the African experience--the noble savage Boxer character, the tragic child soldiers--is defined by the white reaction to and role in it. Yet this one, which I feel is a worse offender than, say, The Last King of Scotland, didn't get a bad rap at all for the same "offense."

She feels that way, but in no way does the movie sympathize with her. It depicts her as silly, foolish, and air-headed. Hence the ephemerality of the film: it's depicting an African revolution from the point-of-view of the entitled white colonists, who are so caught up in their own head to realize this is not their country or their land.

That's what I thought, anyway. I never got a sense of entitlement or pretention from the film itself.