Shared knowledge What makes people different? One nation from another. The color of the skin, the language spoken by the people, the identity of the culture that has become personified. And to continue in the list of links can be more and more. But let's stop. Are the attributes changing? Skin color hardly. Except for the mixing of nations. Infusing one society into another. And language? This is the most mobile, more sensitive mechanism that absorbs new and loses the obsolete. Culture, only in a closed system, is subject to less transformation. When “exchange”, enrichment with new, is capable of degeneration, degradation. Whether it is captured by a stronger one or resists rejection depends on the successive generations of successors. Keep the knowledge of the fathers dear, keep the trust. Imitating the alien? Lose your identity.
It is to the culture, heritage of ancestors that the director’s view is addressed in this film. African bush with the blinding sun in us from the screen. The Negroid race of the west of the continent is familiar to us. From the Paris cabinet of France, we are transported to the current realities of Mali. Ethnographic excursion for an hour and a half review.
Step by step, the viewer steps behind Bakari. Once upon a time, together with his father, he left his homeland, married a white woman, and taught economics to students. Successful? By Western standards, more than that. Decades later, circumstances bring him back to his roots. An antelope mask, found by a parent while preparing an exhibition of African culture, was brought in his backpack. She represents masculinity. And a broken horn, one of two, as a metaphor for the path of a chosen people. “Torvysh”, wandering through the unfamiliar labyrinths of the sacred knowledge of the generation, a veil of explanation opened. So who is he? Here he is an unwise child. He doesn't know what he's doing. He doesn't know what he's doing. I don’t know what the consequences are.
Barely, casually, the spiritual heritage of the Dogon people with mask ceremonies, ritual rites, leapfrog dancing tour. Do the gates to the other world open before us? Are the dead ready to invade the world of the living? Or an entertainment show, by today's standards of understanding the obsolete, are we watching? Are the grains of knowledge hidden by the initiates, or do we contemplate an attractive anachronism? There's plenty.
Bakary goes from person to person. From conversation to conversation. From town to village. From settlement to settlement. To the origin of generation. To begin with. Did you find it? Did you find it?
And the end of the ribbon is a straight road between two watersheds. No winding, just. We're the only ones making it harder. People. Sami.
So what about Bakari? Judging by his knees and the joy on his face, he opened up a lot. His path is bright. It is not a path, groping to the touch, the highway underfoot. Wandering's over. Untrustworthy looks do not drill backs.
Pretty specific. The effect of entertainment here is almost reduced to zero. This is almost a documentary story with a minimum of game plastic. The director did everything possible not to distract the viewer from the main, dotted on the plot - the invaluable heritage of the forefathers.
In fullness of impressions from the picture I added for myself viewing materials on the masks of Mali. The information space of the present time makes this easy. The horizon of understanding has expanded.
7 out of 10