Review of Moolaadé (2004) by Chris B — 07 Dec 2004

[color=black][font=Tahoma][color=black][font=Tahoma]This is a simple tale set in a remote West African village. As the story begins, four young girls have just escaped from what the villagers refer to as the "purification ritual", which is their term for a ceremony at which girls undergo female circumcision. Despite the high rate of death and complications caused by this procedure, it's a tradition that goes way back and most villagers cling to it. In fact, any girl that isn't "purified" is considered to be unclean and thus unfit for marriage. [/font][/color].

[color=black][font=Tahoma]Only one girl in the entire village has evaded purification. She is the teenage daughter of a woman named Colle, who after having lost two babies during childbirth due to complications from her own genital mutilation, has vowed to protect her daughter from the same fate. Thus, after the four girls flee the ritual, they wisely seek sanctuary in the home of Colle, knowing that she'll be sympathetic to their cause. [/font][/color].

[color=black][font=Tahoma]Colle decides to help the girls and does so by invoking something called "moolaade", which means "protection". This is symbolized by tying a red and yellow braided rope across the entrance to her family's compound, about a foot above the ground. The girls are forbidden from stepping across it to leave the compound and their would-be mutilators are forbidden from stepping across it to enter. According to traditional beliefs, harm would come to anyone violating the moolaade[i],[/i] so this proves to be very effective.[/font][/color].

Colle's moolaade causes [color=black][font=Tahoma]all sorts of commotion. The group of red-robed women who perform the village circumcisions is none to pleased and takes the matter to the village elders. The elders, all men, decide that the moolaade must be respected until Colle utters "the word" which will remove it. But Colle refuses. There are several nasty exchanges across the protective rope between Colle and the cabal of red-robed women, Colle and the mothers of the fugitive children, and Colle and the village elders, but Colle refuses to budge.[/font][/color].

[color=black][font=Tahoma]Meanwhile, in a nonsensical leap of logic, the men of the village decide that the women should no longer be allowed to listen to their radios. Apparently, the thinking is that the radios fill their pretty little heads with subversive ideas from the outside world and that this is dangerous to the well-being of the village. Never mind the fact that all the women ever seem to listen to is music and the Colle is the only non-docile one in the bunch. [/font][/color].

[color=black][font=Tahoma]Nonetheless, the men spend several days collecting all of the radios in the village and tossing them into a huge heap in the center of town. They then proceed to set the whole pile on fire, maybe 50 radios total, batteries and all. I suppose the burning heap of hazardous waste is meant to symbolize something, perhaps the struggle between traditional and modern ways, but I found this whole subplot to be ridiculous. [/font][/color].

[color=black][font=Tahoma]But anyway.[/font][/color].

[color=black][font=Tahoma]Things finally come to a head with Colle's moolaade when Colle's husband's bastard of an older brother orders Colle's husband to order Colle to say "the word", claiming that she's making them both look like laughingstocks. The defiant Colle still refuses. As wives in these parts aren't allowed to disobey their husbands, but husbands are allowed (and even encouraged) to beat their wives, this leads to a very long and unpleasant scene. [/font][/color].

[color=black][font=Tahoma]But in the end, fired up more by anger about their incinerated radios than by Colle's strength and resolve, the women all unite in a big grrrl power song and dance routine. And after seizing the purification knives and throwing them into the fire, they vow that no girl will be genitally mutilated in their village ever again. Publicly whipped by their husbands, yes. Forced to marry at age 11, perhaps. But genitally mutilated, no. Or at least not until the men are able to purchase a new set of ginsu kinves. [/font][/color].

[color=black][font=Tahoma]One critic called this a "stand-up-and-cheer-finale". Another called "Moolaade" a "positively feel-good" movie. [/font][/color][color=black][font=Tahoma]Woohoo, yes! Positively feel-good! This film, which covers a time span of only a few days, contains a murder, two suicides, an accidental death, and a public flogging. But none of that matters, I suppose, because in the end, a group of women wearing colorful ethnic costumes breaks into a spontaneous dance of rebellion. I just can't remember the last time I felt so warm and fuzzy.[/font][/color].

[color=black][font=Tahoma]Although I'm giving this film a mild recommendation, mine appears to be one of least enthusiastic reviews out there. Most critics absolutely LOVE this film, but I just don't get it. I suppose genital mutilation is an easy issue for we westerners to unite against. And perhaps doing so lets us feel good about ourselves by allowing us to feel superior to those cultures that aren't so "enlightened". [/font][/color][color=black][font=Tahoma]But still. Does espousing an important cause automatically make something a great movie? [/font][/color][color=black][font=Tahoma]Am I being politically incorrect by saying that I found myself struggling to stay awake at times? That some of the plot twists seemed contrived and manipulative? That the film is didactically repetitive? I mean, I'm all for women of the third world rallying against their oppressors, but I'm rating a film here, not a human rights movement. [/font][/color].

[color=black][font=Tahoma]What I liked most about this film is that it provides a porthole into the day-to-day workings of a society of people who are somewhat sheltered from the modern world. Just seeing how they live and watching them perform their daily chores is interesting. For me, there's also an extra bit of enjoyment that comes from having traveled in this area a couple of years ago and now seeing it again on film. As a westerner, however, I was automatically accorded the social status of a man and thus had very little interaction with women. I'm seeing their perspective now, through this film, for the first time.[/font][/color][/font][/color].