Review of A Screaming Man (2010) by Tor M — 21 Sep 2011

A former swimming champion is replaced by his son as the pool attendant at a posh Chadian hotel.

I understand why this film got rave reviews. There is a quiet power to Emile Abossolo-M'bo's performance, and the filmmaking is full of subtle moments of his character's quiet desperation. And the film doesn't make an overt, in-your-face political point, but by the end, we can't escape the folly of war.

But the film is remarkably slow. One moment of strong acting is also an example of the film's main flaw: the camera starts at a three-quarter shot of Adam, and over the course of about forty-five seconds, it zooms in to a extreme close-up just as a tear forms in Adam's right eye. It takes an amazing amount of talent for an actor to make that work, and even though M'bo does, it's an incredibly long way to travel for the payoff. If this were the only slow moment in the film, I'd be raving, but cumulatively, there are at least fifteen minutes composed of Adam walking down the same streets he later rides a motorcycle down. And on and on. When Stanley Kubrick employed some of the same camerawork, it built suspense; when director Mahamet Saleh Haroun tries these tricks, it's too much, comprising a film that is tortuously slow.

Overall, I'm sympathetic to the film's political points and subtle filmmaking, but if only there were a character with youthful energy (Adam's son is a prime candidate), then it would balance the film's overall meandering style.