BAMAKO REVIEWS IN BRIEF

New York Times, Variety, Time Out, Salon, Newsday, October 22nd, 2006

The New York Times says:
“Bamako is a film that needs to be seen, argued over and seen again.” — A.O. Scott

Time Out NY says:
“It’s easy to recommend Abderrahmane Sissako’s exuberant Bamako, not least for its vibrant Malian settings and cast of villagers. More substantially, the movie takes on a key issue of our time—African debt and the crippling policies of the International Monetary Fund—and magically manages to be critical without feeling at all like a lecture. The issues are mostly explored in a dazzling fictional trial, one that’s interrupted by a bizarro, Leone-style Western starring Danny Glover. Rarely have politics and pleasure mixed this freely. — Joshua Rothkopf

VARIETY says:
“ 'Bamako' brilliantly rises to the challenge of presenting a serious discussion of globalization, African debt and the World Bank in a lively, entertaining feature film... Talented Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako ("Life on Earth," "Waiting for Happiness") hits a high note with this warm winner.”

Salon.com says:
“...I wrote last week that "Bamako," a challenging work that combines human drama and Brechtian agitprop about the injustice of the global economy, by the Mauritanian-born director Abderrahmane Sissako, is the festival's masterpiece so far. That impression sticks, and unlikely as it sounds, New Yorker Films has now acquired the film, so big-city viewers, at least, will get a crack at it. On one hand, "Bamako" is about a crumbling middle-class marriage in Mali's capital city (which gives the film its title), with a beautiful, flirtatious wife pursuing a dangerous career as a nightclub singer while her upright, disapproving husband stays at home.

“How this interacts with the "trial" going forward in the courtyard of the couple's home – a tribunal in which the people of Africa are prosecuting the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (with both sides represented by white, white-wigged lawyers) for "pauperizing" them – is something of an open question. Meanwhile, animals wander around the courtyard, women wash laundry, the trial must pause for a wedding procession, local guys play cards and discuss death. Then there's the hilarious interpolated TV western, starring Danny Glover, Palestinian director Elia Suleiman and Sissako himself. If this all just sounds like left-wing pretentiousness, then God bless you and move on. But those with a taste for this kind of confrontational and experimental work will find that it's surprisingly moving, funny, tragic, strange and undogmatic. Trust me a little; ride a hunch. –Andrew O’Hehir

Newsday says:
“…the Film Society of Lincoln Center has always kept its eyes and ears open for the best and most provocative African films. And this year's 44th edition of the society's New York Film Festival has found a distinctive gem with "Bamako" by Abderrahmane Sissako, a Mauritanian-born director who made his first splash at the 2002 New York festival with his haunting debut feature, "Waiting for Happiness."

Sissako's follow-up has so many disparate elements that you're amazed at
how they meld into one acerbic, potent statement. Set in Mali, "Bamako"
starts out as an account of a troubled marriage between a stoic villager
and his nightclub-singer spouse.

As such intimate drama plays itself out, a tribunal takes place in the courtyard of the couple's home in which white-wigged lawyers representing the African people prosecute the World Bank and its International Monetary Fund for carrying out policies that leave the continent relatively impoverished.

At one point, a village family is shown watching Danny Glover, Palestinian director Elia Suleiman and Sissako on television in a spot-on, cannily anachronistic parody of "spaghetti westerns." This antic digression, too, has points to make about the global economy's benign neglect of Africa.

It shouldn't work, but it does. Even if you consider the trial sequences to be preachy, you have to concede that they're preaching about issues that rarely, if ever, get aired to mass audiences, especially in the West. And the poet in Sissako can't help but let lyricism seep into his trial, through the riveting testimony, in chanting and song, of a poor farmer.
—Gene Seymour

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