2012
A young girl in Saudi Arabia is desperate to own a bike so she can race her friend despite it being socially unacceptable. When she hears that the Quran recitation contest would win her enough money to buy herself a bike, she becomes dead set on winning.
This was quite a bitter sweet film. You could see that Wadjda was an enterprising young girl with ambitious plans, but even after she had appeared to have got everything you still had the feeling that her whole world would continue to campaign against her.
I thought the characterization was fantastic. Al-Mansour manages to portray very religious characters who fight against Wadjda's dream in a sympathetic human way. There are no complete baddies here. All the characters were well fleshed out, apart from Wadjda's father whose appearances are sporadic. However I feel that the father worked best this way, as it was a film focusing on the separate sphere of women in Saudi Arabia, whereas it is shown that men inhabit a different sphere.
The cinematography and the editing were not particularly note worthy, but they aided the story along nicely. The focus of the film was not the aesthetic anyway, so this was not a problem.
The script was very realistic. It managed to show the story showed through the slightly blurred eyes of a child, so managing to focus on the hope of the bike rather than the heartbreaking elements of segregation, the father leaving and oppression.
Overall this was a lovely film that showed a different side of the world in a universal way.
No comments:
Post a Comment