I understand getting your point across, trafficking is genuinely a scourge upon our globe. But this is unfortunately a disempowering misery train.
The narrative of this movie completely disengages from the character work it sets up in its first half for an hour of multiple grueling scenes of our characters stumbling across the dunes. It's also nearly 3 hours long if you don't see how this is an issue. My affective range needs to be reset before I can grieve over their situation further. I'm not sure why we don't dive into the backstories of the other characters. Equally puzzled at the idea that we get characterization, metaphorical props, and water as metaphor for home for the main character but never complete the arc with any development or look into Hakim and Ibrahim. A death of a certain someone invites more tragedy into the protagonists story, but not much more than that. Ibrahims sacrifice feels dull without getting to know him too.
I understand the directors vision for depicting an unfiltered shock to the audience here. Disengaging from a story based narrative to dive deeper into this horror has some admiration from me. Rules can be expertly broken to great effect, I just don't think this did it very well. I don't like it when depictions of struggle make the downtrodden look completely weak and miserable. I know this isn't necessarily the same case here, but movies showing minority populations are typically careful not to demean them in depiction. These characters are effectively vessels with no agency which can work to convey a certain brutal physicality.
I understand getting your point across, trafficking is genuinely a scourge upon our globe. But this is unfortunately a disempowering misery train.
The narrative of this movie completely disengages from the character work it sets up in its first half for an hour of multiple grueling scenes of our characters stumbling across the dunes. It's also nearly 3 hours long if you don't see how this is an issue. My affective range needs to be reset before I can grieve over their situation further. I'm not sure why we don't dive into the backstories of the other characters. Equally puzzled at the idea that we get characterization, metaphorical props, and water as metaphor for home for the main character but never complete the arc with any development or look into Hakim and Ibrahim. A death of a certain someone invites more tragedy into the protagonists story, but not much more than that. Ibrahims sacrifice feels dull without getting to know him too.
I understand the directors vision for depicting an unfiltered shock to the audience here. Disengaging from a story based narrative to dive deeper into this horror has some admiration from me. Rules can be expertly broken to great effect, I just don't think this did it very well. I don't like it when depictions of struggle make the downtrodden look completely weak and miserable. I know this isn't necessarily the same case here, but movies showing minority populations are typically careful not to demean them in depiction. These characters are effectively vessels with no agency which can work to convey a certain brutal physicality.
