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| Monday, September 20, 2010 02:26 PM |
| On the Viewer - Xala |
 by Fëanor |
The next entry in my Running with Netflix series (subtitled movies I watch on Netflix Instant on the Wii while running on the treadmill) is Xala, a movie made in the African nation of Senegal in 1975. I added it to my list of movies to see ages ago, when I read about it in a book that I bought for a film class in college. It was really hard to find a copy of it, but thanks to Netflix, I've finally been able to see it. Yay technology!
It's been a while since I've seen a movie as deep, artistic, and meaningful as Xala. That's not a mistake, either; I've pretty much been avoiding movies of that sort on purpose, because I just haven't felt up to handling them. Why watch something difficult when I can just zone out with something simple? But smart, complex movies are rewarding and entertaining in their own way, and it was good to be reminded of that.
(Warning: there are spoilers below, but this isn't really the kind of movie that will be spoiled by me telling you what happens in it, so maybe don't worry about it.)
Xala is a brilliant and dark socio-political satire about the hypocrisy and corruption rampant in Senegal right after it became independent from France. The plot is about a successful government official who, upon marrying his much younger third wife, discovers he has the "xala," or the curse - in other words, he's impotent. In his attempts to rid himself of the xala, he loses everything.
But of course the movie is really about a lot more than that. It opens with a very clever and subtly biting sequence. A group of men and women in traditional African garb storm a large, imposing building with classical Greek architecture. They invade a room where three European men sit wearing business suits. They oust the men, who leave peacefully, if reluctantly. They also remove the symbols of Europe from the room - Greek busts, etc. - and replace them with a picture of the new, African president. African ministers arrive and sit down around the table, and a speech is given - Africa for Africans! We've taken the country back! But outside, a white man orders black African soldiers to push the black African crowd back, away from the building, to make way for the European officials, who return to the room and hand a briefcase to each of the new African officials. The officials open the briefcases and are pleased to find them full of cash. The Europeans are allowed to remain in the room, now standing in the background, behind their African counterparts. We notice that in the picture of the president on the wall there is also a briefcase.
The African ministers all speak French, wear European business suits, have adopted European ways, and are flush with European cash. In short, they've become nothing but corrupt imitations of the European men they've supposedly replaced. One, known as El Hadji, uses the government's money to marry his third wife. During the reception, there's a particularly striking incident: one man tells a second man he's just returned from a vacation. The second man asks if he's gone to Spain, and the first replies that he can't go to Spain anymore because "there are too many negroes." Both men are black, of course. In another scene from the reception, two men meet on either side of a doorway, but each is determined to be polite and wait for the other to go through first. So they're both stuck waiting in the doorway.
When El Hadji can't perform on his wedding night, he and his fellow ministers immediately blame a very non-European cause - a curse - and seek non-European solutions: village magicians and fetishes. El Hadji spends more and more of the government's money on cures that don't work. When he trucks out into the middle of nowhere to a wizard who is finally able to cure him, he pays the man with a check (!) that ends up bouncing. In fact, everybody's checks are bouncing now, so El Hadji's fellow ministers finally call him to task. (It seems clear they were willing to overlook all his failings until they ran out of money.) In an angry and desperate speech that makes plain everything the movie has been subtly suggesting so far, El Hadji accuses his fellow officials of hypocrisy. They are just as corrupt as him, just as guilty of everything they're accusing him of. They embrace or reject their heritage as they choose, whenever it suits them. But they ignore El Hadji and throw him out. He has lost his manhood, his money, his job, and now he loses two of his wives. In the final sequence, a crowd of cripples and beggars invades his house. They eat his food and sit on his furniture. When he objects, they explain that when he took power, he stole their homes and their land. They're just taking back what's theirs. They gave him the xala, and they can lift the curse. All he has to do is remove his clothes and allow them all to spit on him. Desperate, he gives in to this final act of disgusting debasement. And that's how the film ends - with the once powerful man naked, surrounded by beggars, covered in their saliva.
It's a brutal, powerful, intelligent, thoughtful, angry, darkly funny movie. If it makes a misstep, it's El Hadji's too-obvious speech near the end. But it's only a small misstep in an otherwise masterful piece of art. |
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