Blu-Ray Review: Claire Denis’ ‘White Material’ Creates Nightmarish Imagery

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CHICAGO – Africa has routinely played a major role in the work of Claire Denis, a French writer/director deservedly hailed as one of the greatest living filmmakers. Her upbringing in colonial Africa certainly proved to be an influence on her 1988 directorial debut, “Chocolat,” as well as 1999’s equally evocative “Beau travail.” Both films centered on protagonists re-connecting with their deep-seated memories of life on the continent.

“White Material” could easily be seen as the completion of a thematic trilogy, though it also stands on its own as a singularly haunting and disturbing work of art. The death of European colonialism is reluctantly witnessed through the eyes of Maria (Isabelle Huppert), a white plantation owner in Africa whose love of the land and devotion to her coffee crop causes her to deny the civil war gradually consuming her country. Even with a gun pointed at her head, Maria’s determination remains unflinching.

Blu-Ray Rating: 5.0/5.0

Perhaps no actress could’ve brought as much quiet pathos and intelligence to the role as Huppert, whose hypnotic face draws the viewer in even as Denis maintains her distance. With her pale, pink dress juxtaposed against a forbidding green landscape, Maria manages to look fragile and forceful, often within the same frame. Like Terrence Malick, another giant of modern world cinema, Denis allows her landscapes to be characters unto themselves. She’s fascinated by how a composed, human physicality relates to a chaotic natural landscape. Yet while Malick’s films are awash in astonishing beauty, Denis opts for a more realistic, unromanticized approach to her visual palate. She’s less interested in viewing the world from her characters’ perspectives than she is in viewing them from her own. Her meticulously nuanced brand of cinema witnesses rather than comments, and observes rather than preaches. In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, “Material” could’ve ended up being a standard politicized polemic. By fictionalizing the names and details of her unnamed setting, Denis and her co-writer Marie N’Diaye have concocted a story that can apply to countless problem areas around the world, while still taking the form of a potent fable.

Isabelle Huppert stars in Claire Denis’ White Material.
Photo credit: The Criterion Collection

Cinematographer Yves Cape (“Humanité) impeccably fuses his sensibilities with Denis’ style, resulting in mesmerizing imagery that carry a nightmarish tension. In the opening sequence, a flashlight glides along the walls of Maria’s home, illuminating various African artifacts before falling on the face of a dead man, played by Isaach De Bankolé, whose face often resembles a chiseled sculpture (for further proof, check out Jim Jarmusch’s “The Limits of Control”). The majority of the film is comprised of flashbacks, where we learn that the man is in fact a mythologized rebel officer known as “The Boxer,” whose bleeding wounds caused him to seek solace at Maria’s plantation. He was fortunate to find a woman as blind to race as she is to the outside world. The plantation technically belongs to Maria’s ex-husband, André (Christopher Lambert), who attempts to sell the plantation, in order to “save her from herself.” Voices ordering for Maria to leave start emerging from multiple sources—transistor radios, helicopters, former employees. Her grown son, Manuel (a deeply unnerving Nicolas Duvauchelle), starts fashioning himself as the leader of a young rebel army. Yet Maria remains lost in her own delusions, somehow remaining convinced that everything will work itself out. Few scenes are more anxiety inducing than the one in which Maria takes a joyride of unfocused bliss, as Cape’s jagged camera angles capture the danger and purity of her reckless abandon.

White Material was released on Blu-Ray and DVD on April 12, 2011. Photo credit: The Criterion Collection

“White Material” is presented in crystalline 1080p High Definition (with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio), and includes an excellent 24-minute interview with Denis, whose short, curly hair resembles that of her heroine. She voices her intense dislike of discussing the psychological subtext of her script, and says that she relied heavily on Huppert’s uncanny ability to “bring words to life with her body.” Huppert had originally requested for Denis to adapt Doris Lessing’s Africa-set drama, “The Grass is Singing,” but the filmmaker chose instead to tell a story inspired by Côte d’Ivoire president Laurent Gbagbo‘s movement for citizens to prove their “pure Ivority.” Since the film couldn’t be shot along the volatile Ivory Coast, the production eventually settled in Cameroon. Bankolé’s character was based on Burkino Faso president Thomas Sankara, who represented a beacon of hope for many Africans prior to his assassination. Denis made sure to portray an impending civil war utilizing fictitious names that wouldn’t cause her local crew members to become nervous.
 
After collaborating several times with cinematographer Agnès Godard, Denis was excited to work with Cape, particularly after admiring his work in a number of Bruce Dumont pictures. Electrical equipment was held in customs for four weeks, forcing Denis and her crew to brighten scenes with natural light (she admits that the equipment just seemed like a hassle upon its arrival). For composer Stuart Staples’ theme for the child soldiers, Denis wanted their youthful age to be conveyed in the music, more so than their militaristic nature. Huppert’s 14-minute interview is equally compelling, since she offers her own interpretation of various moments in the film, such as its shocking finale. She discusses how Denis restructured the film entirely in the final edit, framing the story with Maria’s fateful bus trip, allowing her to “travel back in time” to the recent past that no longer exists. Rounding out the extras are a 13-minute interview with Bankolé, who reveals details about his character’s ambiguous backstory, a brief deleted scene, and a rather unusual (and amusing) 12-minute featurette shot and narrated by Denis. It chronicles her trip to the 2010 Écrans Noirs Film Festival, which failed to adequately screen her picture, due to the limitations of local technology. Yet the glow of her childhood nostalgia for the area is apparent, even within her growing disappointment.

By MATT FAGERHOLM Staff Writer HollywoodChicago.com matt@hollywoodchicago.com