Critic Reviews

The serious accusations are leavened by the moments of brimming, illogical, intimate neighborly dailiness the filmmaker also captures with warmth and infectious high spirits.

As demonstrated in his previous film, a plangent snapshot of subsistence called "Waiting for Happiness," Sissako is a poet, and the filmmaking in this new picture is stuff of a deserving laureate.

One reason Bamako feels like a blast of sanity is that the theoretical debates about the state of the world, particularly Africa and more particularly Mali, are only half of its agenda. The other half, broadly speaking, is the life of everyday Africans.

Bamako is something different: a work of cool intelligence and profound anger, a long, dense, argument that is also a haunting visual poem.

Sissako has an unusual camera eye, patient and alert to the ebb and flow of both the courtroom sequences and the outside scenes. The music is wonderful as well.

Never mind Hollywood's big-star, big-budget hand-wringing about Africa - Bamako is the real thing.

A barrel of laughs, this ain't. But it's a fearless high-wire act, grim and witty, confrontational and self-mocking. Its message may be dire, but Bamako is a feat of intellectual and cinematic daring that will leave your brain buzzing.

Rather miraculously, picture succeeds in painlessly educating its viewers about global politics and economics while it describes contemporary Africa with freshness and clarity.

Far from an easy watch, either in terms of its hard-hitting content, seemingly haphazard structuring or its dense symbolism. But this makes sense of the political intricacies by balancing the rhetoric and statistics with everyday occurrences that give the iniquities and inadequacies a human face.

Sissako makes his point: Africa's best treasure is its humanity.