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| Director Souleymane Cissé |
YEELEN (Brightness) A aka: The Light Mali Burkina Faso France Germany (105 mi) 1987 d: Souleymane Cissé
One night I was watching late-night films on . . . I think it was on Showtime. There was this film called Yeelen [1987]. The picture had just started at 2:30 in the morning, and the image was very captivating, and I watched the whole thing. I discovered that it was directed by Souleymane Cissé and came from Mali. I got so excited. I had seen Ousmane Sembène’s films from Senegal—he was the first to put African cinema on the map, in the ‘60’s—but I hadn’t seen anything quite like this . . . the poetry of the film. I’ve seen many, many movies over the years, and there are only a few that suddenly inspire you so much that you want to continue to make films. This was one of them.
—Spike Lee interviews Martin Scorsese, November 24, 2008, Martin Scorsese - Interview Magazine
The rich imagery and symbolism are carefully depicted to achieve a specific goal and significance, which is to invite the spectator to seek for the deeper meaning which transcends the literary meaning of what the entire film signifies.
—Souleymane Cissé
Winner of the Festival Jury Prize at Cannes in 1987, the first African film to win any prize at Cannes, a festival known for its paucity of African films, and one of the first African films ever distributed on video, this is a mythic story set in an unspecified, pre-colonial past, firmly rooted in West African Mande culture (Mandé peoples), which is nothing less than the story of the world’s creation, set in an ancient Malian kingdom of West Africa, as told through an elaborately visualized African mythology and lore as seen through the eyes of a young Bambara (Bambara people) native, Nianankoro (Issiaka Kané), son of one of the elders, who upon reaching manhood discovers his life’s destiny, that he must confront his own father who has relentlessly been tracking him down since birth vowing to kill him. His father Soma (Niamanto Sanógó) is an evil sorcerer who can summon magic powers and walks the earth chanting to the gods with a magic post carried by two servants. Although Nianankoro recognizes his future is fraught with danger, he follows his mother’s instructions wearing a neck fetish for protection before setting out on a spiritual journey where he not only intends to escape from his father but also hopes to find his blind uncle, his father’s twin Djigui Diarra (also played by Sanógó), who will offer him more protection. Shifting the social realist style of his earlier films, consulting with Malian historian Youssouf Tata Cissé, a specialist in the oral history of Mali, the filmmaker has reconfigured his own African cinema language, continuing the legacy of Senegalese film director Ousmane Sembène and Burkina Faso filmmaker Idrissa Ouédraogo, combining the music of Malian vocalist Salif Kefta with French jazz artist Michel Portal, opening with a brief prologue referencing Bambara symbols and divine knowledge essential to the Komo, a powerful secret society of sorcerers, “Heat makes fire and the two worlds, earth and sky, exist through light.” In a sign of respect, permission of community elders was asked by Cissé before reenacting scenes of Komo incantations. The film follows Nianankoro’s mythical adventures and is essentially an examination of the process of creation and destruction through light (Yeelen), expressed through oral African traditions, oftentimes featuring tribal ceremony, as Nianankoro crosses through various tribal regions. Described by Film Comment magazine as “not only the most beautifully photographed African film ever, but also the best African film ever made,” where it was specifically designed to highlight African as opposed to Western influences, yet it surprisingly contains Western influences as well, including an Eden-like quality to the landscape, surrealistic mysticism, and an adherence to an Oedipus complex that the director may have subconsciously not even been aware of. While this film was clearly aimed at African viewers, accentuating a culture rarely depicted on celluloid, it’s nonetheless unsurprising that those who are completely unfamiliar with the cultural references have also been mesmerized by the artistic aesthetic, as it speaks to both African and Western cultures, a film of hypnotic beauty and spiritual depth, playing out as an allegory of the times, where the ambiguous mythic narrative and arresting visual style transcend borders, lending it a universal appeal. Part of the 1960’s decolonization and national liberation struggles on the continent, which were jolted by the assassination of democratically elected Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, African directors such as Cissé (who died earlier this year in February), Ousmane Sembène, Sarah Maldoror, and Abderrahmane Sissako were all educated in Moscow film schools, a practice that has discontinued, where there was initially some question about who might follow in their footsteps, but their collective influence clearly extends to a new crop of filmmakers like Mahamat-Saleh Haroun from Chad and Mati Diop of Senegal, both of whom studied film in Paris.
Taking three years to film, with a series of setbacks that included dust storms that lasted for months, making the crew sick, along with the unexpected death of the lead actor Issiaka Kané who tragically died during the production of the film, it was further delayed due to overseas shipping of equipment and film stock from France, where the French financing actually led to the arrest and imprisonment of Cissé, as it was legally forbidden in local productions, while shooting under such strong sunlight in a location not far from the equator presented its own challenges. Set in a timeless age, spoken in Bambara and Fula, a historical fiction loosely based on the Epic of Sundiata, the Bambara even today remain the most powerful ethnic group in Mali, a country that prides itself in the inclusion of minority groups, each of which maintains their own distinctive ethnic culture. While the Bambara culture features ancestor worship, the film is steeped in the traditions of the Komo, a ritualistic blending of science and nature, mastered by the descendants of powerful magicians, some of whom, like Somo and his younger brother Bafing, have abused their control of the supernatural, becoming corrupt with tyrannical power (a metaphor for the current rulers of Mali), refusing to share their wisdom outside their small enclosed ranks, or use their power for the wider benefit of all, which is the ideal sought by Nianankoro who has inherited his father’s gifts. Forcing viewers to navigate the fundamental oppositions of change and tradition, life and death, light and darkness, Cissé indicts the corrupt and violent regime of President Moussa Traoré, who was in power when the film was made, a military dictatorship that killed protestors as well as political opposition, coming to power through a military coup that ousted the first president of an independent Mali, Modibo Keïta. Simply put, this is the story of good and evil, imagining what happens when the two forces finally encounter one another, a film that thrives on the subjective point of view, as the director reveals the central conflict from various perspectives. Much of it told through the amateurish performances of non-professional actors in an excruciatingly slow, non-narrative, dreamlike quality, where the dialogue is sparse, much of it perplexing, remaining a mystery, where Nianankoro, despite his magical gifts, is an everyman that the audience can sympathize with as he’s the only character that’s fully realized, earnest and kind-hearted, a young man who means well, where people willingly bestow upon him their wisdom in ordinary, everyday conversation. Many of the rituals displayed are impressive, even if not fully understood, as the filmmaker is adhering to the authenticity of the Malian people. Abandoned and repudiated by his father at birth and raised by his mother, Somo continues to spew venom about his desire to kill his own flesh and blood, beautifully expressed in a secret Komo ceremony where he convinces the others within the circle, “My son is the knife blade, but I am the handle. Not even the sharpest knife can cut its own handle,” where his mantra seems to be, “You have to know how to betray in order to succeed,” featuring another weird moment where he magically forces a dog and an albino man about to be sacrificed to the gods to walk backwards towards him, as if being pulled against time, which only adds to the layered richness of the setting. Nianankoro grows curious why his father hates him so much, a mystery that is addressed, but never really answered, so true meaning remains engulfed in mystery, continually hidden throughout, even to those who seek such knowledge.
Like Homer’s Odyssey, Nianankoro sets out on his journey alone through the territories of Peul and Dogon, a bit like Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout (1971), where after they separate, perhaps for the last time, his mother (Soumba Traore) performs a sacred river baptismal asking the gods for his blessing, pouring milk over her naked upper torso, a quiet but immensely moving image. Nianankoro in bare feet walks through the arid landscape of the nomadic Peul people, a tribe featuring horses and spears, who are intent on arresting him before he casts a spell to freeze one of the Peul warriors before the eyes of their King (Balla Moussa Keïta), an impressive feat. His sorcery leads to his use in an upcoming battle with a warring tribe, as after a ritualistic head-on-head physical confrontation between two warriors, they are overrun by a neighboring village and are heading towards the King until Nianankoro sets angry bees and fire upon them to turn them back. Having already saved his kingdom, the King asks if he could fix the infertility of his youngest wife so she could bear him a child, which he does willingly, but can’t help himself and succumbs to her beauty, actually impregnating her himself, a mistake he regrets afterwards, making him fallible, but instead of enduring the King’s wrath, he offers the girl to him before ordering them both out of his kingdom, forcing them into the cliff-dwelling lands of the Dogon, natural stargazers who have the only natural spring for miles, who offer him the advice: “Science is inexhaustible, miracles eternal.” Both Nianankoro and his new Peul wife Attou (Aoua Sangare) purify themselves in the waterfall before being led to his more benevolent uncle Djigui Diarra who has the gift of prophecy and offers his wisdom, confirming that his wife is indeed pregnant and carrying his son who is “destined to be a bright star,” also offering his aid, a sacred magic fetish wing of Koré, where all along Nianankoro has been carrying a wooden paddle with a gemstone eye of the Koré given to him by his mother as a gift to his uncle. Together, they increase his powers, leading to the ultimate showdown with his father, unleashing the full force of their sorcery, with a disembodied voice announcing a final declaration of guilt against Soma, resulting in an apocalyptic blast of light that destroys them both, but it reshapes the entire landscape into sand, as a new world is born, offering a hopeful glimpse of the future, Montage, Faces, and Landscapes in Yeelen (Brightness ... YouTube (4:54). With this film, which attempts to correct the colonial misrepresentation of African history and culture, Cissé hopes to arouse the African conscience to cleanse the government of corruption and restore the ethical integrity of ancestral Mali by linking Africans to their authentic historical roots, becoming an abstract metaphor for Africans taking control of their own destiny. Despite attempts by Islam to extinguish the influence of the Komo, whose origins likely precede the arrival of Islam to West Africa, it still exerts great authority in contemporary Mali. With such a visually hypnotic film, graceful and meditative, Cissé’s most philosophically layered film, the cinematography by Jean-Noël Ferragut and Jean-Michel Humeau is brilliant, while the music and sound design is equally stunning, especially at the finale, where the film remains quiet and haunting as it unravels its mysteries.
Ben Okri on Souleymane Cissé's Yeelen BFI Sight and Sound video conversation by Gaylene Gould, BFI’s Head Of Cinemas & Events, with the poet and novelist Ben Okri on YouTube (15:54)
