Alright, Dreams of Dust.
SPoilers ahead
I must say that I was less satisfied with Dreams of Dust than I was with Yeelen or Waiting for Happiness.
Its about a man running from his past. He comes to Mali to mine Gold. He was a farmer in Niger, but he had to leave after his daughter dies of Malaria. I think that the film implies that his wife and other children have already died, but its not made perfectly clear.
The film opens with a beautiful shot of a landscape covered in dust, and as the wind blows a dust cloud along, the characters and setting of the film are revealed, like the pulling back of a curtain. A great wordless opening.
You have Moctar, the main character, Thiam, who acts as his father figure, and Coumba and her daughter Marianne who function as the central characetrs. There are 2 or 3 other minor characters who speak a few words, but aren't central to the story, other than serving as a means for the director to convey a few more thing to the audience about the main character.
Moctar takes a liking to Coumba, whose husband died mining a few years prior to his arrival.
One day Moctar hurts himself while watching Coumba, and has to visit the doctor. I didn't really see the relevance in this scene, other than to have the doctor explain to us that blue- blues is alcohol mixed with amphetamines.
Moctar befriends Coumba and her daughter, and Coumba tells him of her desire to send her daughter away to Paris to get an education. After finding a nugget of gold, Moctar gives them the money they need for the both of them to leave for Paris.
At the end we see him mixing up some blue-blues, and then he sees Marianne running through the street. He follows her out of the village, and into the desert. I don't know if this was a hallucination, or a symbolic image. Is he going to follow her and her mother to Paris, or is he going to wander out into the desert and die?
This is a very dry description of a film, that does contain more life than this, but the telling of the story carries no kind of dramatic weight. We don't really see much of the thought put into any of Moctar's decisions, we only watch him meditate on them after he has made them.
The film has a plot, but not a very strong one. Let me make this clear, this is not the kind of film that does not have a plot, or is built of only vignettes. This is not "The Mirror" or even "Waiting for Happiness". There is a traditional story here. In "Waiting for Happiness", there is the story of the main character wanting to leave, but he is but a small player in that film. The other characters in Waiting for Happiness are more fully developed than those in "Dreams of Dust", and the existence of a plot makes me wish that if the characters are not going to be more fully developed, that I could at least get be treated to an interesting plot.
For me, I wish that the film would have gone one way or the other, traditional plot of vignettes about the ensemble cast. Also, for me, a film must have memorable moments, and while there is some fine cinematography here, aside from the opening sequence of wind driven dust, there are not many magical moments in the film. One might say that the last scene was magical, but for me, it was too confusing, at least upon this initial viewing, for me to consider the final scene satisfying.
4/8
SPoilers ahead
I must say that I was less satisfied with Dreams of Dust than I was with Yeelen or Waiting for Happiness.
Its about a man running from his past. He comes to Mali to mine Gold. He was a farmer in Niger, but he had to leave after his daughter dies of Malaria. I think that the film implies that his wife and other children have already died, but its not made perfectly clear.
The film opens with a beautiful shot of a landscape covered in dust, and as the wind blows a dust cloud along, the characters and setting of the film are revealed, like the pulling back of a curtain. A great wordless opening.
You have Moctar, the main character, Thiam, who acts as his father figure, and Coumba and her daughter Marianne who function as the central characetrs. There are 2 or 3 other minor characters who speak a few words, but aren't central to the story, other than serving as a means for the director to convey a few more thing to the audience about the main character.
Moctar takes a liking to Coumba, whose husband died mining a few years prior to his arrival.
One day Moctar hurts himself while watching Coumba, and has to visit the doctor. I didn't really see the relevance in this scene, other than to have the doctor explain to us that blue- blues is alcohol mixed with amphetamines.
Moctar befriends Coumba and her daughter, and Coumba tells him of her desire to send her daughter away to Paris to get an education. After finding a nugget of gold, Moctar gives them the money they need for the both of them to leave for Paris.
At the end we see him mixing up some blue-blues, and then he sees Marianne running through the street. He follows her out of the village, and into the desert. I don't know if this was a hallucination, or a symbolic image. Is he going to follow her and her mother to Paris, or is he going to wander out into the desert and die?
This is a very dry description of a film, that does contain more life than this, but the telling of the story carries no kind of dramatic weight. We don't really see much of the thought put into any of Moctar's decisions, we only watch him meditate on them after he has made them.
The film has a plot, but not a very strong one. Let me make this clear, this is not the kind of film that does not have a plot, or is built of only vignettes. This is not "The Mirror" or even "Waiting for Happiness". There is a traditional story here. In "Waiting for Happiness", there is the story of the main character wanting to leave, but he is but a small player in that film. The other characters in Waiting for Happiness are more fully developed than those in "Dreams of Dust", and the existence of a plot makes me wish that if the characters are not going to be more fully developed, that I could at least get be treated to an interesting plot.
For me, I wish that the film would have gone one way or the other, traditional plot of vignettes about the ensemble cast. Also, for me, a film must have memorable moments, and while there is some fine cinematography here, aside from the opening sequence of wind driven dust, there are not many magical moments in the film. One might say that the last scene was magical, but for me, it was too confusing, at least upon this initial viewing, for me to consider the final scene satisfying.
4/8