35 Cows and a Kalashnikov

Bonus points for trying not to show Africa as a land where undernourished children living in slums wait for Angelina Jolie or Bono to fly in to take photos with them. However, this poetic tribute to the dark continent by a colleague and friend of Roland Emmerich has other flaws. In the manner of Emmerich’s (and Bay's) spectacles, it revels in grand details, repetition of the same shots, slow motion and rapid cuts. It is accompanied by slightly ominous, important-sounding music like that heard in a Hollywood epic. We see only Africans during their tribal rituals. The English translation of the natives’ utterances is inscribed directly into the picture, whereby it becomes an inseparable part of the picture and gains the status of great wisdom that must be written down. The second segment, a portrait of an individual set in Brazzaville, is also made up of shot compositions that mainly sound and look good, regardless of how unnatural their half-art film, half-Hollywood (but hardly African) stylisation seems in the given context. The visually no less aggressive final chapter about wrestlers again works with faded colours and fetishising shots of muscular bodies, and the music is somewhat more belligerent. The informational value is minimal, but the visceral experience may be powerful enough for some to forgive the film for forgetting that it is supposed to be “about something”. The platitudinous statements of the people interviewed do not have much narrative value, nor do they add much to the observational shots with respect to the stylisation, which does not fit very well with what we see and thus does not highlight certain topics (the meaning of the rituals performed, the specific features of African wrestling). On the contrary, it draws attention away from them. 50% (19.03.2017)