White Material (2009)

Claire Denis' films never stop baffling me. She tries out new styles, takes on new subjects but her film always express a relation to film that is completely her own: the moving image is not a mere information device. This separates her films from most films created today. White Material is an intense and unnerving film about the consequences of colonialism. One could even say that the film deconstructs the colonial gaze. The film takes place in an unnamed African country. A conflict is escalating. Brutal rebel fighters and child soldiers patrol the roads and do whatever they want to do. Their leader is the boxer. In a radio station, a man defends their actions and plays reggae music. The colonialists are blamed. A white woman rides a bus. We learn that she is the co-manager of a coffee plantation. Her workers desert the place as the meltdown in the country increases. It would be too dangerous to keep up the work, but this is something that the woman will not acknowledge. Defiantly, she continues to work. She tries to keep up the appearance of normal routines and in doing this we see the illusions she upholds. The danger is not real to her. She does not want to deal with the contempt shown towards her and her kind by the people surrounding her: she does not want to be the colonial oppressor - but yet -. Early one, I realize that this story will not end in beautiful harmony.

Her ex-husband also works on the plantation. His attitude is different. He wants to leave, the only thing needed is his father's, the owner's, signature. His father expresses yet another relation to the plantage: it is his life, he has always been there, he grew up there. The woman's son is going crazy. Rebelling against his parents, he joins the rebel troops. Denis does not portray any of the persons in the film as more sympathetic, nor does she point out any evil forces. The film, instead, shows how all of these people, workers, farm managers, the rebels, the army, live in a country afflicted by wounds that do not heal. Denis looks at types of power and powerlessness, how the powerful becomes powerless in a certain situation, and the other way around. The characters' emotions and attitudes are rarely unambiguously spelled out. We are led through series of controntations to interpret, compare, and sometimes guess. It is a film in which you have to be an active viewer, you have to use you judgment.

The style of Whie Material might be less experimental than some of her other, even more elusive films. But it is still a very unusual film that does not lean on common ideas about how one thing leads to another. The story has both a movement of progression (tragedy) and elliptical repetition. This is interesting. The use of flashback is unconventional, too - as I said before, this has nothing to do with 'information', or creating a coherent story. One of the learnings of White material seems to be that there cannot be a coherent story about this subject: all actors see differently, feel differently, and it would be foolish to look at the situation from a perspective of nowhere, as if there were an account in which all sides could be smoothly conjoined.