At the end of Dry Season director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun stages a purging of the history of violence and a renunciation of the act of revenge. His main character, the teenager Atim, acts out before his blind grandfather the execution of Nassara, the murderer of his own father. This symbolic acting-out is Haroun’s cinematic equivalent to the Peace and Reconciliation Commission that we hear radio reports on at the beginning of the film and which the characters (the grandfather and Nassara alike) specifically reject.
Hanoun’s superb film stylistically is very much in line with other examples of African francophone cinema (for example, Waiting for Happiness by Abderrahmane Sissako, one of Dry Season’s producers) but it’s particularly focused in its main theme, central narrative drive, and concentration on two main, contrasting characters. The elderly Nassara is made to be a more sympathetic character even, emotionally needy with a vulnerability symbolised by his crippling back pain, whereas it’s always hard to detect Atim’s real thoughts and feelings beneath his hard-set expression. But his pain and confusion is clear enough, and the shifting relationship between the two men is marvellously conveyed through the physical work they do together in Nassara’s bakery.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
14 Nov 2006 9:52 PM | Submit Comment