Rebelle

I learned about this film "War Witch" because it was nominated for the Oscar in Best Foreign Language Film. It is in French and was submitted by Canada. It is not an easy movie to watch. It chronicles two years in the life of a female child warrior in civil war-torn Africa.

Set in an unspecified African village and country, Komona is a 12 year old girl who was forcibly abducted by rebels to be a child warrior among many other children in her village. She had a unique talent of seeing spirits of the dead, which gave her the distinction of being a "War Witch" and thus a sacred member of their band of rebels. Despite this, she would still live a harrowing life of constant violence and anguish. This would be interrupted by an interlude of love, but sadly it would not last too long.

We hear the story in Komona's point of view so we can share in her very thoughts through her narrations. Young Rachel Mwanza bravely and compellingly played Komona. We literally see her face age from the first time we see her on screen to her final scene. We see a child forced to mature beyond her years in the most brutal ways possible. As you watch this, you will be thankful you do not lead Komona's tortured existence.

The direction, screenplay, cinematography and make-up of this film are outstanding. The depiction of the dead spirits Komona sees are very effective in its simplicity. This film succeeds to bring the heretofore unknown hell as experienced by children in war-ravaged Africa into the consciousness of the rest of the world. Are you ready to see this hell?

During African civil war, Komona, a 14-year old African rural girl, gets abducted by some brutal rebellious chaps and bears unbearable woes, along with an unborn war child in her miserable fate. Kim Nguyen, in his path of direction, seems brilliant with the treatment of children psychology in that inhuman environment. He beautifully represents the war-witch, Komona's romance with the Magician who was also believed to have some spiritual ability just like her. The way how Komona is forced to be mature in the cruel world at her early days and her mental conflicts during her pregnancy would play with our sentiments and emotions a lot. A deep melancholy tone flows throughout the film with narratives. Definitely an applauding pick of Oscar board (Y)___

When we think of African countries, many Westerners think of countries in the midst of bloody civil wars involving child soldiers, senseless violence, AIDs, etc. Our impression of African countries is one that we've learned from movies like Blood Diamond and from images presented by charities and documentaries with major press coverage like Invisible Children and the Kony 2012 campaign. The unintended consequence of these shocking images, presented for the heartfelt purpose of raising awareness, is this: the single story. We have a few images serving as one generic story representing an entire continent of countries and cultures.

The complexities, variations, and even just the common middle-class, everyday lives that exist in African countries are reduced to this single story: of starving, war-torn people waiting for the rest of the world to save them by donating a few dollars, or by buying a "buy one give one" pair of Toms shoes.

War Witch embodies the single story that many Westerners think of the "country of Africa" because we simply meld all African countries together into one homogeneous war-torn state. In fact, War Witch doesn't even differentiate which country or war the story represents. The setting is simply "Africa." The Beauty of War Witch As I watched the first few scenes of the film, the tragedy of the child soldier story quickly become apparent as the movie's story. I was initially disappointed as it is a story with which I'm already familiar. Luckily, the beauty of this film's simplicity also became apparent. Without much dialogue, we as an audience were able to suspend our disbelief and appreciate the supernatural aspects of the story as a child's attempt to cope with the tragedies she faces. We watch as she deals with death, separation, and heartbreak while she is haunted by ghosts of her parents. The ghosts aren't cheesy nor are they scary, they are simply haunting reminders that the soul of the main character is not at rest.

While the child conveys strength through each atrocity she faces, we as an audience are reminded by the white ghosts that she is not at ease. Title slides appear at different moments throughout the film and denote our young protagonist's ages throughout the film: 12, 13 and 14 years old. Displaying her age, rather than a date and time, reminds us of the innocence robbed as we travel with the main character through her struggles as she "forces tears back into her eyes." Were it not for these displays of her age, we would forget that the strength shown by the young woman is actually shown by a child. Nguyen excels at reminding the audience of this, in portraying the child's coping mechanisms through supernatural visions, and at having us witness tragedy without astoundingly gory scenes that, while they may be more accurate, would distract from our journey with the child.

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This is not, by any means, a sophisticated film. It is slightly above amateur. There are two noteworthy exception first the acting of the lead actress and second a compelling story. It is the story of an African girl whose village is overrun by Rebels and then is forced to kill her parents and fight for these self same rebels. She is haunted by her dead parents throughout the film. First they warn her about the "government" soldiers who are laying in wait in the forest and then they begin to haunt her for not paying proper respect to their remains. This is the interesting part of the story, it mirrors Henry James's Turn of the Screw (in a simpler manner) and it is dynamically acted by the lead actress. The conflict runs throughout the film until she is ready to confront her burned out village and her parents remains.

The rest of the story is unsatisfying. There is a War Lord named Tiger who the script builds up to be important, but his character is never fleshed out. The same is true for all the other characters.

I watched it in its original language and then with the captions in English and much is missed in the translation. In other words the translation is really poor. I give it three points for effort.

In the harrowing, Oscar-nominated Canadian drama "War Witch," a young African girl is conscripted into a band of armed rebels, ordered by them to kill her own parents, then forced, along with the other children in her village, to fight against the government forces they're opposing. Because she seemingly has some sort of psychic visions of where the enemy is hiding in the woods (it's actually hallucinations brought on by a psychotropic liquid she imbibes from some local plants), she earns the position of personal "witch" to the chief rebel himself - a position that brings with it special protection as well (at least up to a point). But that's only the beginning of Komona's ordeal as she hooks up with an albino "magician" (the excellent Serge Kanyinda) with whom she tries to flee the horrors of the world around them.

And it is those very horrors - the nonstop terror and violence, and the ever present prospect of sudden death - that writer/director Kim Nguyen captures to such powerful effect in this film. Despite its occasional forays into the surreal, what one takes away most from "War Witch" is its unflinching willingness to confront the brutal realities of life for Komona and the countless others who share her predicament. Then there are the occasional acts of random kindness that allow hope to flourish even in the most horrible of circumstances.

And all throughout her ordeal, Komona must find a way to bury, both literally and figuratively, the ghosts of the parents she killed.

Rachel Mwanza is utterly amazing as Komona, and she richly deserved all the praise and awards heaped on her for her performance. Whether it's her heartbreaking narration to her unborn child or the understated way in which she reacts to and internally processes the unspeakable atrocities she both witnesses and is forced to commit, Mwanza embodies a much larger tragedy within the narrower confines of a single character.

It may be hard to watch at times, but "War Witch" provides an invaluable reminder of what happens when we send our children off to war.