Through bitter experience, the cinetrix knows better than to cop to politics on a film blog. She will merely point out that these are interesting times to watch Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene's film Ceddo.
The story of the coming of Islam to an African village, Ceddo collapses several eras of African history and religious and colonial conquest into a single contiguous narrative. Its structure is like the cross-section of an onion: A white 19th century Christian missionary, an 18th century slave trader, and an imam from perhaps 300 to 500 years earlier still are all summoned to the same tribal council. At issue is the kidnapping of the princess, Dior, by one of the Ceddo [villagers], done to protest the forced conversions from native fetishism to Islam demanded by the king.
The print I saw last night was gorgeous and crisp, with the colors of the actors' clothing, particularly the regal red worn by the king and his courtiers, popping dramatically against the dun, sere Senegalese landscape. [Also, the old ladies arrived before the lights went down this time, although they did speak to each other loudly, in French, on several occasions. Comme dit on en Francais, "Shut it!"?] The council scenes involved a lot of heightened declamatory dialogue addressed to an interlocutor named Jaraaf, who looked just like Andre Leon Talley. Once I realized this, I had a difficult time not thinking of his pronouncements as the Style Faxer's latest report from the Paris runways, but the cinetrix is OK with being shallow in parlous times.
Anyhow, things heat up when the ambitious imam makes his move, declaring jihad against the hold outs and manuevering himself into power by fire and fiat. The long sequence in which the conquered Ceddo's braids are shorn in preparation for conversion is breathtaking.
Ceddo was made in the 1970s, in the full flush of African Marxism, but it's hard to resist seeing the seeds of today's turmoil in the story it sows.
Plus, the denouement kicks ass.
