DARATT (2006)

On the evidence of two of his five feature films, the Chadian director Mahamat Saleh Haroun makes modern fables for a war-torn continent. His stories simple and accessible. He has a modernist pictorial sense with an eye for the way a patch of color will stand out in a drab setting, but his narrative style in its eschewal of flashbacks or manipulative twists has the stark austerity of classical silent film. Daratt ("Dry Season") is a story that could have been told about America after the Civil War or any place or time when the impulse for revenge grapples with the need for reconciliation.

While Chad will be at war again at the time of Haroun's latest film, A Screaming Man, Daratt finds the country winding down a conflict. It isn't winding down to everyone's satisfaction, however. One village is outraged to learn that the country's truth and reconciliation commission has recommended against prosecuting alleged war criminals. A blind elder orders his grandson Atim (Ali Bacha Barkaim) to go to the capital and kill a man named Nassara, who had killed the father Atim never knew.

As a civilian, Nassara (Youssouf Djaoro of Screaming Man) runs a bakery. After stalking him awhile, Atim confronts his target during his morning distribution of day-old loaves to the neighborhood poor. Nassara assumes that Atim's just another charity case and offers him a loaf. Atim takes a couple of bites and spits them out contemptuously -- but doesn't shoot the baker. He comes back the next day to tell Nassara that he doesn't want charity, but a job.

From here things get fairly predictable. Nassara becomes the first true father-figure Atim has known, while Atim begins to seem like the son Nassara hasn't yet had -- though his wife is expecting. The men have some character traits in common. Both are quick-tempered -- Nassara warns Atim that he can be dangerous when angry, while Atim repeatedly quits or spurns Nassara at the slightest provocation, only to return every time. Nassara is no ogre of a war criminal but a vulnerable man, forced to use a voice-device due to a slit throat from long ago and challenged by a rival baker with a truck. Atim is no relentless avenger -- having not known his father, his mission is more a matter of obligation than passion. Still, he rebels at every hint that Nassara might be a father to him, especially after Mrs. Nassara loses her baby, and Haroun keeps us in suspense throughout over Atim will finally do....

The ending may strike viewers as implausible in one way or another, but Daratt works overall as a parable of reconciliation. Djaoro marks himself as an actor to watch with his two films for Haroun. Barkaim faces a challenge as the moody Atim, but he convinces us of the character's seething conflict of emotions. Visually, Daratt is an exercise in tone and texture. I find Haroun's placement of color -- the blue of the bakery door, patches of green elsewhere -- against sunbaked walls nearly as entertaining as the drama of Atim and Nassara. Haroun's are films about poverty that are also visual treats. They're windows into a world we should all know more about, and discoveries like these are what global arthouse cinema can sometimes still be about.

A SCREAMING MAN (Un homme qui crie, 2010)

Reading an account of an African film festival a few months ago, I got the impression that Mahamat Saleh Haroun's film, a Cannes award winner, represented the great hope of the continent's largely Francophone art cinema at a moment when cheaply and crudely made Nigerian flicks (the product of "Nollywood") threaten to usurp Africa's cinematic identity. It's been acclaimed in Europe and America, but I wonder how many Africans have seen it. It's not "arty" in any alienating way, but as with a lot of what ends up as arthouse cinema in the U.S., I have to wonder how popular this film was, compared to Nollywood or Hollywood, on its home turf. It'd be reassuring to learn that it was popular, because it's good enough to deserve some popularity. But you can't help wondering whether the primary intended audience was the people of Chad, Africans overall, or the global community of movie buffs.

Haroun tells a simple, powerful story. It's about Adam, aka "Champ," a onetime champion swimmer who has long been the pool attendant -- swimming instructor, lifeguard, etc., at a hotel, formerly run by the government, that's popular with tourists. Champ's son Abdel is his assistant, but both men's jobs are in danger with the hotel's privatization, symbolized by a Chinese woman taking charge. Champ's situation is even more precarious in a state of civil war, as the ruling party pressures citizens into further contributions to the war effort. He ends up getting bad news and good news; he loses his attendant job to Abdel but gets to stay on as a uniformed gatekeeper. But even that's not such good news because it means the former gatekeeper, an old friend of Champ's, has been sacked. That aside, Champ still feels degraded and humiliated by his new work of lifting and lowering barriers for cars to arrive or depart. I found his fall from grace oddly reminiscent of F. W. Murnau's The Last Laugh, but while in that film a doorman is humiliated by losing his ornate uniform, Champ's new uniform is the badge of his disgrace.

Meanwhile, the neighborhood "chief" keeps pressing Champ to contribute something to the war, noting pointedly that he's sent a son to fight the rebels. The problem seems to be solved by force when Abdel is abruptly conscripted, quite against his will, as Champ watches helplessly. In Abdel's absence Champ resumes his pool job but doesn't enjoy it. He and his wife virtually adopt a pregnant woman who tells them that Abdel's the father of her unborn child. That's just one of the factors that finally compels Champ to confess that he set up Abdel's conscription, to get the chief off his back and perhaps eliminate a rival, and drives him to rescue his son from the perils of war....

The title proves ironic, since Champ never screams. You can infer a lot of silent screaming, though, as he broods over his various misfortunes, and his frequent silences are the best part of Youssouf Djaoro's performance. The less artfully articulate such a character is -- though Champ is fairly chatty in his better moods -- the more universal his emotions for global audiences. We can agree on the swirl of emotions inside him, and each of us can judge their relative weight for himself.

Director Haroun gives us a quick, evocative sketch of N'Djamena and a community under siege on many fronts: from the nebulous rebellion, from the monotonous propaganda of its own government, and from the economic forces threatening Champ's security. The movie doesn't count as the usual visual travelogue of an exotic place, but Haroun emphasizes the telling details: the checkpoints, the unlit neighborhoods Champ rides through at night on his moped. Laurent Brunet's cinematography gives the city an earthy, sunbaked palette that seems characteristically African. They don't go overboard making things look picturesque but their compositions are effective and often affecting. The ending spirals from the melodramatic to the maudlin, but it has the outcome the story seems to require, and aims for a pathos once more commonly welcome around the world. Whether the finale moves you as much as Haroun hopes, you can still admire the overall execution for its lean efficiency, for being austere without becoming abstract. It's the sort of film more people should see everywhere, whether many end up liking it or not, just to appreciate what movies can make of the ordeals of ordinary folk.