Like an Afro-futurist Arabian Nights or Homer’s Odyssey, 1987’s Yeelen tells in simple episodes the story of a young man on the run from his father. It’s often referred to as the greatest film ever to come out of Africa (no, Black Panther does not count) but even if you don’t buy that you’ll surely agree that it’s a beautiful film with an otherworldly atmosphere all its own.
Director Soulemayne Cissé set out to make a film about Africa that rejected the usual colonial views of the continent – backward, savage etc – and largely succeeds, giving us a mysterious place steeped in tradition and running on old hierarchies and a rigid sense of decorum. Being polite and rendering a little respect when it’s asked for gets you a long way in this version of the continent.
Cissé’s opening shot is shocking, dramatic and situates us right where he wants us. A chicken hanging upside down bursts into flames at the command of an old man. Soma (Niamanto Sanogo) is a magician of some sort, and thanks to a tireless dialogue he keeps up with invisible deities, we learn that he is on the hunt for his son. Soma intends to kill Niankoro before his son kills him.
Cissé then introduces the son, in conversation with his aged mother (Soumba Traore). They have been on the run from the old man for ten years. But now, she tells him, it’s time for Niankoro (Issiaka Kane) to go it alone. Dad is closing in on them and Niankoro is particularly at risk now his mother is too old to move quickly. Run, run for your life, she says, and try to find your uncle Djigui, another man of magic and one who may be able to stop your father. Djigui is Niankoro’s last chance.
The film seesaws between the two. Upright, dignified Niankoro running into one potentially dangerous situation after another – mistaken for a cattle thief, “accidentally” sleeping with a king’s youngest wife (“My penis betrayed me,” he explains) – and either using little bursts of magic or his winningly straightforward personality to keep one step ahead of real trouble.
Or it’s with the father, a faintly ridiculous blowhard following behind, his fly whisk always in motion and his two slaves/servants carrying a magic post that’s going to help the father annihilate the son, for reasons of an Oedipal nature.
At one point there is a gathering of the Komo, a Jedi-like grouping of these magical men (they are all men), where Soma tries to justify his quest to his peers and finds they aren’t all on his side. Business completed, the Komo drink millet beer and sing, laugh and have the sort of fun time no one connected to the Force in Star Wars ever has.
It provides the “drunken interlude” – see Jaws – before the final showdown. To shift genre references yet again, right after Niankoro meets his uncle (also played by Sanogo), his father turns up and, in classic Western style, father and son have their showdown in the desert – magic at 20 paces!
The whole thing, it’s often said, is set in Mali in the 13th century, but there’s a reference to guns and bullets that would seem to junk that as a theory. Some time in the pre-colonial past is indisputably Cissé’s idea, and in a prophetic speech by Djigui he sees bad times and slavery coming… but in the future.
Almost everyone in this is a non-actor and you can easily tell who is and who isn’t a professional. The actors get speeches, have nuance, seem human (Sanogo is one, and so is Balla Moussa Keita, who plays the cuckolded king). The first-timers – including Kane (excellent) and Aoua Sangare, as the young woman Niankoro accidentally sleeps with – either say little or speak in a stylised, declamatory way. As a strategy it really works, Niankoro’s silence, for example, invests him with a dignity and power which his father’s relentless babbling only emphasises.
It’s a lovely looking film, shot by two French cinematographers, Jean-Noël Ferragut and Jean-Michel Humeau, with an eye for the colours of Africa – mustards and ochres and yellows abound, and the Fujicolor film stock means this film is sharp and vivid and bright (Yeelen translates as Brightness).
Best African film ever? Are we including French Algeria? Egypt? South Africa? However you slice it, Yeelen would be a contender. Magical and yet minimal, elemental and yet personal. Pungent performances. And it looks great. What more do you want?
Yeelen – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
