Synopsis
The Journey of the Hyena.
Mory, a cowherd, and Anta, a university student, try to make money in order to go to Paris and leave their boring past behind.
Mory, a cowherd, and Anta, a university student, try to make money in order to go to Paris and leave their boring past behind.
Journey of the Hyena, Il viaggio della iena, 土狼之旅, Пътят на хиената, El viaje de la hiena, 투키 부키, Туки-Буки, A Viagem da Hiena, Le voyage de la Hyène, Тукі Букі, トゥキ・ブキ ハイエナの旅, Podróż hieny, Touki bouki
Been meaning to watch this ever since the Criterion released the Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project. Vancouver's Cinematheque was screening this so why not check it out on the big screen.
I went home and checked out the extras on the Criterion Channel. Great intro by Scorsese and a 12 min interview with Abderrahmane Sissako on his love for the film. Sissako calls Djibril Diop Mambéty the greatest African filmmaker.
The main plot is essentially the "two young lovers wanting to break out of their one-horse town" plot however because this is Senegal and the young protagonists are attempting to leave Africa for Europe (specifically Paris), this becomes about something greater... a poetic study colonialism and migration. Really powerful editing…
"Paris, Paris, Paris," the record loops but never advances suggesting he'll probably never get there. Conflicts over resources and debts, an utterance of "Shit!" as a tilt-up reveals European style high rise buildings over the more humble African abodes, Senegal has a strange appeal. Playful visual rhymes link a slaughtered steer and the protagonist's motorcycle, then blood draining from a goat's throat to the waves in a crevice to his girlfriend's sexual arousal. An abstract, surreal lovers on the run road movie explodes and implodes under the force of Mambety's stylized editing, the timeline of events vague and open ended. Maybe it's my cultural distance, but I felt nearly baffled by the final moments of the movie, though ultimately I found it mysterious in a pleasing way. It seems to be simultaneously a love letter and a eulogy for Senegal. Looking forward to seeing more Mambety and watching this again some day.
Film #1 in the 30 Countries Challenge: Senegal
This may be the first African film that I have seen, and I now feel immensely upset for having overlooked the films of this continent. Touki Bouki, also known as Journey of the Hyena, is a very static filma about post-colonial feelings in Senegal. The films two main protagonists, Mory and Anta, are university students that have become disillusioned by life in Senegal and seek change. They feel that it would be a great adventure to go to France, and the majority of the film consists of their exploits as they attempt to find enough money to leave Senegal.
The film is shot with unflinching realism, and the camera never shies away…
Paris, Paris, Paris...
the search for an identity, home, and purpose with the excruciatingly unforgiving process that goes with it. a film so beautiful that it felt like every cell in my body was being pulled and pushed in every direction possible; if i had to look at one more beautiful shot or intimate moment, my body threatens either explosion or implosion. even the smallest details contain a vast love and knowledge for what is being filmed. rides an insane and seemingly impossible line between being entertaining, enlightening, visceral, deliriously punk, fantastical and realistic. goes without saying Touki Bouki and its director Djibril Diop Mambéty rightfully and justly deserve a spot in the realm of cinematic visibility of their french new wave influences and its directors (see: godard, truffaut, varda, resnais etc.). you've never seen the collision course for the past, present and future like this before.
*opens Google and starts looking for where to buy a good lilac suit*
An avant-garde and groundbreaking Senegal masterpiece about ambition and alienation. The breathtaking landscapes and the perfect role of nature contrast the savage dreams of an nonconformist low class seeking for the unreachable. How ironic that modern urban civilization usually represents the neoliberal troubles of humanity and here, in Touki Bouki, morally incorrect actions seem to be the easiest path to a "paradise" that is strongly longed for.
98/100
One of the more thoughtful third world movies from this era in the ways iy manage to connects its own European film influences with the characters colonial aflictions. Very abrasive, yet playful and rich imagined.
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
A ironia mordaz, as situações surreais e a desconstrução de uma narrativa tradicional manifestam-se em cada enquadramento. Significativamente, o filme se abre e se fecha com a imagem de um menino que guia um rebanho para o matadouro ao som de uma flauta: cena que contém o movimento e a imobilidade, transmitindo a ideia de um tempo congelado, de um espaço do qual não se pode fugir.
E, de fato, entre estas duas cenas toma forma a utopia de dois jovens com perspectivas de vida diferentes. Ambos apaixonam-se, mas sua cara metade é Paris, intensamente evocada pela canção de Joséphine Baker, na qual o nome da cidade é repetido de uma forma obsessiva, irônica e trágica, que dá somente a…
The bull-horned skull-mounted motorcycle riding cowherd Mory and the university student Anta are both fed up with life in Senegal; they dream of raising enough money to go to Paris. Touki Bouki is a 70s African film inspired by French New Wave, and jump cuts, imagery juxtaposition, and artsy forms of storytelling that come with the terrain. Sympathy is on its side surely, but rarely I’ve felt this shut out by a film before. My relationship with French New Wave can at best be described as ‘difficult’ or ‘complicated’ already, but Touki Bouki truly took the movement’s elements I have the most trouble with and made them its foundation and its centrepieces: (1) inaccessible blank slate main characters, (2) a…
Balancing the aesthetic of French New Wave with the contextual significance of African culture, Touki Bouki is one of the more visually stunning films that I’ve encountered recently!
I was absolutely mesmerized by the scenery and the inclusion of so many scenes of Senegal life. While a narrative is present, I must admit I struggled to truly stick with it at first because I was so captivated by the cinematography and depiction of the people of Senegal.
There’s a painfully honest depiction of the tug-of-war between the comforts of culture/home and the glamorous appeal of heavily romanticized Western culture. That tension works well, concluding in a flurry of emotions within the final 15 minutes.
I’ve been humming Paris, Paris, Paris all day.
I am put in mind of Hoop Dreams here, simply because it was that film that made me think of the false hopes of leaving behind you the travails of your past. In this film, disaffected youths seek escape, but unlike the implications I rejected while considering Hoop Dreams, their dreams involve returning in glory. Again, despite not having anything in common with Mory or Anta, I find I sympathize greatly. The only ways I can imagine being back among the middle class subrural sanitized Americans of Cullman, Alabama, is as some sort of conquering hero returned from afar, apotheosed.
This film is clearly intended as a comedy. There's even an offensive homosexual stereotype thrown in for good measure. But…
A movie that is alternately silly, beautiful, sad, and horrifically gruesome - just like the world itself!