Review of White Material (2010) by Shoggothrex — 26 Mar 2012

Although the film exhibits visual mastery in capturing the brutality and destitution of an African nation in the midst of civil war, and makes excellent use of music and silence, these technical virtues are far overshadowed by its narrative failings.

'White Material' succeeds in shocking its audience with scenes of both graphic and implicit violence, but the narrative focus of the movie undermines the value of these scenes as vehicles for social enlightenment; 'White Material' is not at all about the social issues of Africa.

These are tangential. Instead, it follows the story of a French white woman, Maria Vial, managing a failing coffee plantation against the advice of every single person in the goddamn film. There are plenty of African natives with much more poignant situations than said-stupid white woman, but they are only given cursory characterization, really only enough so that you recognize them when they die.

The madness of Vial nicely parallels the madness in the world around her, but parallelism is also the film's biggest problem: the main character's insane course runs parallel to the backdrop of the civil war in a strangely detached manner, providing no insight into any of the themes at hand.

Vial's story might have been compelling had it been set somewhere else, but her angst is relatively insignificant in the context of a third-world nation at war with itself. Ironically, 'White Material' is in the end nothing more than pointless, self-interested, white material, only of value to those who have somehow, through the course of their own moral development, remained completely ignorant of the African continent.