God of Thunder

Gorgeous scenery, beautiful people, and an important, shameful history lesson. During WWII, Senegalese villagers were put in an impossible situation by France - forced to ship their sons off to fight in the war (as they had been in WWI), then later forced to turn over their precious rice crop to the war effort. They were told they'd be imprisoned and their village would be burned to the ground if they didn't comply, and without the military strength of those controlling them, none of their options is good.

The film shows us at least some of the life and customs of the Senegalese, which includes turning to gods who seem absent and performing a couple of live animal sacrifices (beware, not all of this is hidden). More importantly, it shows their dignity and humanity, particularly in the looks on their faces in the tight shots director Ousmane Sembène regularly gives us, and which were my favorite part of the movie. This is contrasted by the inhumanity of the French, who force people to sit out in the sun as punishment, as well as block a funeral service. It's pretty clear that they don't see the Senegalese as human beings, at least in the complete sense of the word, and while watching it I wondered how these events would have been remembered by history had the black/white roles been reversed (and also how I myself might process it differently).

It's tough to watch other Africans carry out the enforcement of French policies, and of course tough to fathom the cruelty in this example of colonialism. It was a deeply personal story to Sembène, who himself was drafted and fought in the war. The bitter irony of fighting for freedom as part of the "good guys" when his own people suffered atrocities and humiliation was not lost on him, and it's a reminder that even nations with high ideals like "liberté, égalité, fraternité" often fall well short of them.

During the Second World War, press gangs come to a small Diola village and take away the youths to fight for Marshall Petain. When they come back for fifty tons of rice, there's a battle of villagers armed with spears against soldiers armed with rifles. The surviving men retreat to their sacred space and debate the gods and action. The women are rounded up and made to sit in the sun.

The TCM host who spoke before the movie claimed writer-director Ousmane Sembene (1923-2007) was the first motion picture director based in Sub-Saharan Africa (South Africa, I wondered?). As a writer, he realized his works would be available to only the cultural elite. By making movies, he would increase the audience for his work.

There's a strong element of satire in this movie, as two of the army garrison argue about whether two-star General DeGaulle can command seven-star Marshall Petain. The Diolas seem likewise silly, with the men talking about their long patience after a day, and the women behave as if the soldiers are simply an inconvenience. Sembene's compositions are novel to my eye. Instead of using structures to border his interior spaces, he groups them by color. Notice how, in one early scene, the village leaders stand out from the background by their blue clothes, and the way the red caps of the soldiers make them look like bunches of ripe, red berries in fields of green or yellowed grass.

It is difficult for me to assess the excellence of this movie, since that requires context. It won awards at the Berlin and Moscow film festivals and was banned by the French because of its disrespectful view of French colonial authorities. I found it interesting, but whether because of its novelty or excellence, I cannot say.

This frustrating film is brilliant in concept but intensely awkward in execution. His main themes throughout his career are hammered relentlessly: that male elders invited their oppression and that the society rests on the labor of women. But the philosophical issues are alluded to in passing and the use of non-actors portraying elders should have given far less time to their deliberations. The ending is far too abrupt and thwarts the understanding he was building up to all along. Compare this to his most recent film "Faat Kine" and you will see Sembene's development as a storyteller.