Tilai (1990)
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Tilai Movie Review
Tilai is a 1990 Burkinabe drama film directed by Idrissa Ouedraogo. It is an award-winning drama that is very complicated in its subject matter.
Set in Burkina Faso before the French colonized the region, this film chronicles the plight of Saga, who returns to his family’s village and discovers that the woman he was in love with, Nogma, has married his father. This doesn’t prevent the couple from seeing each other again, however. But when it’s discovered that Saga and Nogma have slept together, which the law considers incest, Saga’s brother Kougri is ordered to kill him.
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As is usual for African movies, this is not an easy watch, not by a long mile. It’s an emotionally draining, hopeless and dark movie that is unpleasant to the extreme, but in its brutality and darkness lies the fundamental truth, which is that the laws in these countries were at one time so inhumane that thankfully there were eradicated afterward.
For a movie that deals with such a complicated subject, it is rather straightforward, a bit too simplistic even. A more sophisticated and layered approach to telling this story would have served the tale better. Similar thoughts go to the character development, which is fine, but for this type of movie, I expected more. The acting is pretty good, though, and even more impressive when you take into account that the cast is composed of amateur actors.
Tilai did get a lot of praise in the West, which was rare for an African movie back in the twentieth century. Toronto and Cannes festivals were its biggest proponents and it’s easy to see why they fell in love with it as it’s an emotionally powerful movie that is also elegantly constructed, wonderfully directed by Idrissa Ouedraogo and superbly edited.
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The cinematography is also fantastic as the film captures the feel of the country and its landscapes as well as interiors beautifully. The dialogue is also terrific, though a bit too minimalist for a subject like this. It’s a rather cinematic production, which helped it out considerably.
Tilai is an emotional, even exhausting movie that is immensely dark as it captures some of the worst and most inhumane laws in African countries. It is a film that needed more layered characters and dialogue, but for the most part it dealt with its painful subject matter deftly while also benefiting from excellent directing, editing and cinematography.
My Rating – 4
