A Screaming Man (Sunday, May 29, 2011) (37)

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun's film A Screaming Man is a lovely work and a wonderful example of a how all you need is a short story, not a novel-sized plot, to make a wonderful little movie.

Adam (Youssouf Djaoro) is known as "Champ" to his friends because he was a Central African swimming champion in the 1960s when he was a kid. Now grown, he works as the pool attendant at a swank hotel own by Chinese investors and patronized by European tourists and rich people. His son is his assistant, but is always a bit of a disappointment to Adam who sees work as a duty, while his son sees it as a gateway to meeting women.

Meanwhile, the violent civil war in Chad is heating up outside the walls of the hotel and Adam is constantly pressured by his friend, a recruiter for the national army, to sign his son up to fight against the rebels. Adam is not political in the least and utterly uninterested in the war. One day he gets to work and finds he has been demoted and will now be working the security gate at the front of the hotel. That same day his son is taken by force into conscripted military service. Adam's work falls apart.

It's clear that Haroun, a Chadian writer and director, has watched and studied the films of the great Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene. This film moves along from one scene to another in a very similar way to Sembene's film Xala. Granted, that's more of a comedy than this is, but Adam seeks guidance from elders, doctors and friends and becomes emasculated in a similar way to El Hadji in that Senegalese film. (And, no, there is a real allusion here - it's not just that I'm making a racial/geographic connection.) The film is about Adams fall from power to impotence how how civil wars are destructive to men emotionally and spiritually as much as they're destructive to their bodies. Adam is constantly called "Champ," which of course is ironic because he's the champion of nothing anymore and has absolutely no status. He's facing a crisis of faith similar to the one El Hadji faced.

Haroun has a wonderful style with short, intimate scenes between a few people (generally no more than two at a time) interspersed with interesting transition sequences. One of these shows Adam sitting in his guard uniform at the front gate of the hotel staring directly at us as the camera slowly zooms into his face from far away (the shot goes on for a few minutes). The idea that the harsh reality of his situation is hitting him is impossible to ignore.

As the film moves along, we hear more and more sounds of airplanes and helicopters, a gradual reminder of the war that can't be kept at bay. The lush colors and dark shadows of the hotel and the pool start to seep away and we are left with a more burned-out palette that makes us uncomfortable on a visceral level.

I have to make a special note of Youssouf Djaoro who gives a magnetic and wonderful performance. He does not overdo it at all, but just plays an proud and average man whose life gets totally turned upside down. He's a quiet and internal man, not prone to shouting or fighting, but when his typical way gets disturbed his world crumbles and the joy on his face evaporates until he's a near-zombie.

This is a very efficient little story and is really a beautiful one. It borrows strongly from African cinema and literature, but is fresh and interesting in its own right.

Stars: 3.5 of 4