Soleil O - Confronting The Savage
Thoughts On: Soleil O (Oh, Sun 1967)
Made by Med Hondo, this is the Mauritian film of the series.
As a historical reaction, Soleil O is entirely captivating and undeniably inspiring. With Bunuelian poetics, Hondo structures a cinematic nightmare of failure and inescape. Using a combination of political surrealism and impressionistic biography, Soleil O plays out as, at once, a breath from a lost and unnoteworthy diary no one will read and a passionate political reaction to a pivotal point of change in the era of French colonialism.
Where many would be familiar with French cinema's engagement of colonialism through the modern La Haine, which concerns itself more overtly with North African immigration as well as the West African immigration represented by Hondo, Soleil O stands as a far more complex grandfather figure to the modern demonstration of racial conflicts in France; Oh Sun captures the start of it all, immersed and emerging from the 60s themselves. The real substance and complexity of Soleil O is, however, based in its biography and the extended life of Hondo himself, who not only found notoriety with his political cinema, but funded his independent filmmaking with his success within the international movie machine as a movie dubber.
We are pulled close and into the personal surroundings of our main character then, the Visitor, who moves to France from West Africa in hopes of finding a job and better life for himself. This is done primarily through the sound design, which introduces an intimacy to the film, impressionistically conveying the alien and haunting motions of a big city of strangers deeming the Visitor 'other': an animal, a threat, a commodity. The extension of the diegesis beyond live-recorded sound amplifies his plight, and though there is introduced an intimacy in quiet moments, it is all to ultimately see the Visitor consistently dissociated within the image. A major scene in which the narrative sees a turning point comes as he is approaching buildings seeking employment. He is turned away each time, but it done so with audiovisual distance; he is then often shrouded in suffocating silence and a static space in which he is denied work without explanation or, eventually, simply kicked out of buildings we never even go into. The distance created here is in counterpoint to the political criticisms laced throughout the surreal poetic sequences that evoke the growing consciousness of the Visitor. As he is further alienated in his failures, the visitor grows ever more articulate about the trappings of colonialism, capitalism and even communism. The opening sequence is highly direct in this sense.
The opening introduces imagery that is repeated throughout the surreal political cut scenes along the film. It demonstrates the relinquishing of one’s language, the inheritance of a new religion and taking of a new name only to depict a transformation of the Christian cross to a sword used for war and then eventually discarded and replaced with meaningless violence (the self-destruction of black men) as motivated by money. The articulation here is acute; it highlights the colonial destruction of identity; the profound occurrence of whole nations and peoples learning new languages and discarding, even in spirit, their own under the promise of a new God who rewards suffering. Alas, the loss of identity and subsequent suffering, is never awarded with more fortune than the promise of money; the suffering therefore becomes meaningless. This sentiment is strengthened through the film's depiction of, not just discrimination in the work force (migrant labour argued to be a new form of slavery), but the rejection of the French and Frenchness made in Africa by those in France itself. West Africans are thus shown to have been made French, but not truly, and not correctly; a disguise of sorts that only makes them more vulnerable to predation.
The political surrealism of Soleil O has its influences from the then modern avant-garde style. We feel this in the (you could say, dated) communism of the film, which, visually, emerges as reminiscent in spirit to the works of Godard and others (La Chinoise being released the same year as Soleil O). However, while Hondo utilises techniques, elements and some tone from political New Wave cinema - and French artistic cinema pre-dating the 50s - the biography of the film is its own. There is then a feeling of rageful freedom in the nihilism of many New Wave films; Godard captured most efficiently the explosivity of the meaningless with his rebellious, rubber characters. Others, such as Resnais, found despair and emotional turmoil in nihilism. Hondo does not conclude in alignment with any of this, despite featuring elements of rebellion, humour and despair through his engagement of a nihilistic world in which West Africans are culturally lost with no direction in their exploitation. What comes through most with the closing of Soleil O is a simple scream of perseverance in face of nihilism. In interviews, Hondo has said:
Our African films are underused and underdeveloped. We have good ideas but do not have a way of financing and distributing films. There's no African movie industry that would allow us to produce our own image. It's similar to that underdevelopment in the U.S. that native Americans and the black Americans face, who do not have the money to produce and distribute films nor do they own their own theaters.
[...]
Inside ghettos, those who make a lot of money have no interest in seeing the ghetto becoming aware. They don't want millions of Africans to refuse to see James Bond and prefer the work of Sembene Ousmane or Med Hondo.
In this, Hondo demonstrates a consciousness of the fact that cinema is pretty much a European invention controlled financially, in large part, by Americans. Despite this understanding, Hondo affirms the universality of film. While irrigation may have been developed in Ancient Mesopotamia and surrounding regions, farming is of essence to the entire human spirit. Such is true of cinema. Though invented in Europe, it may be used globally. Alas, it is only through the movement into the heart of the industry that, for instance, African movies can begin to be made. Such is the third-dimensional poetry of Soleil O. To make a African films, a Mauritanian had to move to France. One senses it was the only way his spirit could be relinquished; to become himself, to realise his dream of African cinema, Hondo had to leave Africa.
In his comparison of his and Sembene's cinema to James Bond, it is overt that Hondo stands by the quality of African cinema. His consciousness of its place within colonial confines, as with Soleil O, is at once a condemnation of the suffering he has experienced as a filmmaker, yet it is also his claim of identity and spirit. What then rings through Soleil O most strongly is a painful self-questioning of why? Why did the visitor come to France, leave Africa and seek money? The challenges of his immigration, of West African immigration generally, are constantly on the precipice of being dismissed as a great mistake; a play into the hands of colonisers, and movement into a new form of slavery. However, through the awareness of the dire situation of these migrants, comes the building of a new self; a new Frenchness (one that is much more clearer in the likes of La Haine). In the conclusion of Soleil O, we then see Hondo find resolution in the new understanding of the migrant self, neither strictly African or French. This comes with a small joke in which characters affirm that God is white; if he were black, he would be the biggest bastard of them all. The joke here showcases an awareness of the origin of the Christian god: European culture. Such is why God is said to be white; Africans have their own Gods, and require not the transformation of a new given God. What anguish there'd be if, in all their meaningless suffering, these African migrants were to consider God as oppressing people in his own image; and how God would be rejected, known to be the biggest bastard, by Europeans if he was not made in their image. Such is the battle of the migrants; an acceptance of rule from a God who made them not in his image: the confrontation of a system used against, not made for, them.
And such is the primary, cathartic conclusion of Oh Sun in my view. It is a plain cultural collision in which a man pursues a dream beyond him, putting himself through the transformation from colonised other to a savage invader under the eyes of a foreign God. This is what the screams that conclude this narrative exude: a realisation and acceptance of existential confrontation. The screams produced by our main character following his endless discrimination and the breaking of his vision of Frenchness are woeful but not despaired, they are rageful but not violent; they are cathartic, but not a solution. Those screams draw me most toward the fleeting images of success in the narrative. The African migrants are not allowed to work, but they do not starve, they are given no shelter but always find a place to sleep, they experience no compassion, but found families and friends in the foreign land. The true inspiration of this film is then not just in its contextual commentary, a scream from 1967, but its foreshadowing of change to come. The integration of West Africans into France is therefore shown to be inevitable; certainly not utopian and in total positive, but a force of history not to be quelled. To me, Oh Sun, captures like no other film I have seen, the suffering West African migrants took upon their shoulders as an acceptance and confrontation of colonialism. In the final screams of the film, I felt an ownership, not a relinquishing, of responsibility over all the pain and uncertainty Africans were to experience in this new stage of colonialisation. This ownership gives new definition, a modern definition, to the notion of a savage; the savage is he who embraces the reality of the hard choices; in this film's case, the confrontation of a system that will try to consume you; Hondo's narrative an image of what it is to live and persist in the belly of the beast.
This abstract notion of Soleil O is solidified, as alluded to, by its wider context. Hondo made this biographical film expressing his political consciousness with money he made dubbing American films into French. Hondo is, by all means, an inspirational figure who transformed his life, moving from Mauritania to become a filmmaker in the 50s and 60s. He worked in the industry as an outsider to then fund his own films, establishing his own cinema, expressing who he made himself into through this journey. He continued to do this until the mid-2000s, not only continuing to produce his own films impassioned still by the migrant struggle and his political consciousness, but became ever more successful as a voice dubber, featuring in French releases of films such as Shrek (as Donkey), the Lion King (as Rafiki) and Beverly Hill's Cop (as Axel). Hondo is undoubtably a savage by the true transformed definition of the word - which, as said, I believe this film consciously gives definition to - who stands tall as a successful product of the colonial period in the 50s and 60s. He not only made his own cinema, but established, concurrently, a place in the greater industry - at all times retaining his own voice that did not deny the struggle. It cannot be forgotten, after all, that him dubbing films into French would not only have benefited French consumers, but French-speaking people across the world in former colonies. Such is what I feel and am inspired by in his career - which is captured nicely in this interview in which he affirms his ownership of the French language as an African, with his own voice and spirit.
To close this chapter of the World Cinema series, I encourage you to experience this highly sophisticated and powerful film for yourself. It can be found on the tremendous YouTube channel Old Films Revival Project. This channel is deserving of more attention; its catalogue of just over 100 films is elite - and free! I will be gorging myself on it for much time to come. Forget your worthless Netflix subscription and binge some of the highest levels of cinema you can find on this channel starting with Soleil O:
