Review of Timbuktu (2014) by Cole J — 27 Jan 2015

It's a powerful portrait of a society repressed by religious fundamentalists that has several moments of beauty. What's particularly exciting is that we don't see a lot of films with this sort of setting, and it's easy to appreciate this new perspective from the filmmaker, who uses several characters to tell the story. Timbuktu's anti-religious extremist message is easy to see, but backed with more detail by smaller moments and metaphors, delivered with a big kick at the film's ending.

I do think the film is flawed, however. Many audiences will come away simply reaffirming their own beliefs about religious extremists, seeing them as mere savages. I thought the film could have done more to shed new light on the extremists because we already think they're bad. Another problem I had was that the film showed the problems of society being due to suppression, but the protagonist felt too responsible for his own fate, having committed the crime to get him there, and this felt inconsistent with some of the rest of the film.

Still, the film has moments of near mastery, and is power and socially important, making the flaws mostly forgivable.