With the recent discussion of favorite blind buys and my recognition of having more than a few still unwatched Criterion blu-rays on my shelf, I decided to watch
White Material today. I was surprised how little I cared for it.
The acting is superb all around, especially Isabelle Huppert as Marie, the willfully stubborn and blind-to-reality matriarch trying to hold on to her colonial coffee plantation in an un-named African country as civil war arrives at her doorstep. The cinematography is lovely and bold. The story is interesting, and is told as a series of flash-backs and flash-forwards, which I felt drew me in and kept me engaged. But as the movie progressed, I became less and less interested, just when the dread and tension were ramping up. This a decent drama, but something seemed missing for me. None of the main characters is particularly sympathetic or engaging (which is the point, I suppose). About half-way in an event occurs that marks a watershed.
MAJOR SPOILER ALERT - Do not click if you haven't seen the film
[Show spoiler]The loafish son, who looks and acts like he grew up in Huntington Beach, Ca, instead of Africa (no offense to HBers who read this, but I used to live there and that is what he reminded me of 
), walks off into the bush and gets waylaid by some boy soldiers. This event is traumatic and causes him to go all Travis Bickle, shave his head, grab a shotgun, and disappear until near the end of the film, when he reappears trying to join the gang of child soldiers terrorizing the neighborhood. I guess his mum should have let him sleep in as late as he wanted.
He then leads this gang of hellions back to the plantation to find their revered leader who is being given shelter there, if you can call it that. Then Travis Bickle makes sure to take out his old man, or at least that was the impression I got since the event itself is not actually shown on film but only the aftermath with the son leaving the room (thanks for nothing, Dad). The child soldiers gorge on candy and prescription pills, then fall asleep among strategically placed children’s toys so that the viewer is reminded, you know, that these are kids and stuff even though they carry AKs and shoot people.
The final moments are pretty inexplicable, one of those shock endings that doesn’t make a lot of sense. I suppose there is some allegory in it, and you could make an argument that it represents colonial whites self-destructing amid the madness, but it just did not work for me. I guess the father-in-law deserved it for walking around shirtless for half the film, and Isabelle just goes nuts seeing the end results of her stubbornness. But I couldn’t help thinking she likely would have come crashing through the roof after climbing up on top of a freshly burned-out house, or even if the roof were sturdy enough not to collapse, it would have been frying pan hot. No wonder she gets pissed.
Mind you, all this is done with very fine acting and camera work, and I admit shorting the film the due it deserves by summing it up so flippantly. Some of the scenes I describe above are well done, and quite moving. There are several terrible events portrayed with skilled restraint. But the movie left me not feeling much of anything when I don’t think that was the intent. In the end, I found
White Material to be a flawed, finely acted, beautifully filmed drama that I may have to watch again to fully appreciate, but have no desire to do so anytime soon.
Not a recommended blind buy, but not a bad film by any means. I would rent it first.
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