Touki Bouki - Spoken Imagery
Thoughts On: Touki Bouki (1973)
A young renegade and his girlfriend wreak havoc in search of a way to escape to France from Senegal.
Perhaps one of the most impressive African films I have seen, Touki Bouki is a crystallisation of what I have come to know of Experimental African Cinema. Where the works of Ousmane Sembène (one of the first critically important directors of post-colonial African cinema) are exceptional due to their complexity of cinematic language, it can feel subservient to the presentation of 'concepts', less the feeling of a character, in their films. Med Hondo (a contemporary of Sembène) makes impressive steps beyond his expressions in Black Girl and Xala (which I felt alienating with regards to characters) with Soleil O to express character and identity as a consequence of, and reaction to, 'concepts'; colonialism, Frenchness, individuality, money, destiny, heritage and the future of one's ancestry. There is often a silence or confusedness presented by Sembène that sees his character react to or re-enact confrontations with the then present African struggles in a globalising world of new found independence. Hondo expresses, intellectually, this struggle before evoking - screaming - his soul out in recognition of it. Here is drama, more simply and profoundly a character doing, in an existentially precipitable construction of narrative.
And such seems to be the heart of the Experiment in African Cinema during this time: to express and make palpable the existence of a new voice in world cinema. The seriousness of this is easy to overlook if you are not familiar with the Laval Decree. This was a law that prevented the commercialisation, thus the growth and spread of films made by natives in the French colonies that was in effect between 1934 and 1960. It's Sembène's Black Girl that is considered the first commercially released African film; it was made in 1966. African cinema was supressed by the French, those who essentially invented cinema in 1895 and spread it across the world into the early 20th century. Having participated in the establishment of cinema and the beginning of a new era of sound in early 1934, the French were highly aware of the power of cinema and its influence. They therefore designed the Laval Decree to prevent the expression of anti-colonial images and filmmakers. It was only after the lifting of the decree that African filmmakers could make films (especially in any commercial capacity) without the supervision and permission of the French government; examples of which can be found in the 50s, often being made in France. Still funded by French and European groups, African cinema could only begin to emerge in the 60s. It is therefore clear why some of the first expressions of this stifled cinema would concern the force of colonial rule. Sembène's first steps into this space, in my view, were furthered by Med Hondo who brings us deeper into the personal predicament of colonialism with a more vibrant vision of a distinguished African cinema. Again, this comes back to the Experiment in African Cinema at this time; to become a new voice in world cinema. African directors in this early period, continuing on beyond it into the 80s - with the works of Souleymane Cissé, Flora Gomes, Cheick Oumar Sissoko and King Ampaw - display an intent to technically approach the expression of the African individual globally. From the 90s and with the successful commercialisation of cinema in Egypt and Nigeria we see African cinema as more narratively focused with its commercial backing coming from its local audiences. Such is what distinguishes the Experimental strain in African cinema and brings us to Djibril Diop Mambéty's Touki Bouki, one of the most powerful films from this context I have seen.
Whilst Mambéty is nowhere near as intellectual and articulate as earlier director, Med Hondo, presents himself to be, he achieves a step further still from the foundational experimental works of Ousmane Sembène. Mambéty extends his cinematic space outward from the realm of his soul to begin to touch on the concepts Sembène starts with. In such, you could argue an anarchic touch exists within his work, one that disregards the more post-modern notions of identity found through the collision of concepts and characters seen in the likes of Black Girl and Soleil O. As specific as each of these foundational directors works were to them, there is an individuality all of its own in Mambéty's Touki Bouki. It relies not on the concepts and constraints of any other cinema, though it is most directly related to the French New Wave (as everything must be) and, more directly, contemporary experimental third world cinema works such as those of Jodorowsky; El Topo being released in 1970 and Holy Mountain 1973; El Topo being another cowboy-esque dystopia of character exploration. Instead of approaching character as a concept, Mambéty expresses from within himself technically and biographically.
Touki Bouki's unconventional cinematic basis is most overt in its lack of established and clear ideological and political thinking. It utilises surreal cinematic strategies to create a cacophony of visual story elements that appear more as developing thoughts than a structured narrative. This, I believe, is a key aspiration of many African cinemas, beyond even that of the Experimental period; to evoke narrative as a spoken story, as opposed to a written one. One characteristic of spoken story is that it is more sporadic and tonal than structured and punctuated written story due to its reliance on live performance. For this reason, images like those of Mambéty and Hondo collide in the Einsteinian manner; that and the constructivist Soviet style was of significant influence to all cinemas culturally influenced by communism, and many African cinemas are an example of this. However, the overtonal collisions of Mambéty and Hondo have a chaos to them; a pace to them that results in a sensation that all drama is a random development until a more fundamental tone of the narrative finally appears. With Soleil O, concepts of colonialism's destruction of African identity arise through a spoken word manner of drama. There is therefore a theatricality in the focus on voice over and our main characters sensory perspective. A confusion translated through these devices sees our main character battle toward the notion that he is a savage, and tussles to define it for himself as to retain and become conscious of a personal identity. This is after much stuttering and confounding drama that alienates us from the character, displaying questions of migration, its attraction and trappings, palpably. Technically done with montage, a montage of concepts and evocations of the developing consciousness of our character, much inexplicable collision is required to expose a palpable notion of savagery in Soleil O.
Such a technique is witnessed in Touki Bouki also. But where there is a feeling of chaos in Hondo's film, Mambéty's is pure anarchy. Its violence, sensational texture, prominent and sophisticated mise en scene and cacophony of surreal images develop as a fever of story until it suddenly collapses. From Hondo there is released an existential scream through overtonal montage via a chaotic spoken word story structure. Touki Bouki falls back in on itself, collapsing and relinquishing after setting itself on fire and running down the street with its montage. It is hard to surmise the comparative anarchy of the experimentation in this film; it is far more intense than any other post-colonial African work I have so far seen. Where Hondo evokes Bunuel, Mambéty contextualises surrealism within the African cinematic space. In such, this is an inexplicable film that is as difficult to articulately praise as it is to decipher, and yet it presents one of the richest, texturally and atmospherically, visions of Africa that I have ever seen. One doesn't just feel the heat and humanity of the cinematic space, it is an engrained element that characters are not reactive to; the humidity in this film seems to bleed into the film itself, sizzling the colours and negative spaces of the frame. I then felt fantastically familiar with the African streets, bridges and towns captured in this narrative; they did not feel selected cinematographically, nor happened upon in reality, but adopted to become the prescient landscape of dystopian narrative. The streets are therefore cinematographically alive with narrative and characters in Touki Bouki; one feels the omniscience of shady characters, shape shifters and demons among the society presented; the cinematic pace an open world that characters explore rather than a path they walk.
There is much day-dreaming and sudden fiction in this dystopian, living landscape. The narrative follows two rebellious outsiders who have fallen for one another and intend to make a Bonnie and Clyde-esque break for Paris, from Dakar, robbing and deceiving their way into an appearance of success as well as a new cosmopolitan life. All they have is a motorbike with a cow's skull on its handlebars and the clothes on their back, but they intend to scheme a way into this fantastical life through deceptive madness; the characters are Godardian in this way. The plot, however, feels entirely subservient to these two aforementioned elements however: symbols and fashion. Composing the complementary and conflicting elements of this film's anarchic montage are the use of the characters as objects or models, and the evocation of symbols around them. Most fascinating in this film, then, is the repeated collision of images of live-stock and cows to be slaughtered with our characters, who are culturally and occupationally farmers, and also with more grand and sinister images of them having success, money and power as outlaws.
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Much could be said about the fashion design throughout the film - which is truly immaculate and unique - and much can be pondered as it concerns the symbolic images of cows, slaughter and death. But, I honestly cannot make a coherent conclusion on what Touki Bouki achieves and evokes conceptually.
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Most apparently, Touki Bouki deals with a character related to the destruction of cows; a farmer, or perhaps a Hyena as the title (translated as The Journey of the Hyena) suggests. This is the central identify of our main character, Mory. There are then constant surreal images around him of cows being peacefully ridden by a child; being slaughtered procedurally in an abattoir; and of course he seems to ride on a dead cow with his iconic skull on the handlebars of his motorbike (his only other possession and characteristic for the most part). The cow appears to be a symbol of Mory's identity and soul; his story appears to be one of being raised in peace, for the slaughter; his flesh and bones a possession of another. In this way, we feel Mory to be of the Earth: geographically and politically, if one attempts to see the film from the perspective drawn from works of Sembène and Hondo; existentially and nihilistically from another perspective. The montage that binds Mory to the image of a cow, his final moments in the film being him embracing the cow skull, signify to me an attachment to self. The motorbike fashioned with the skull is the main driver of drama and character for much of the film; it and its iconic skull constantly draw the character, and this is most evident when his girlfriend throws it away before they get on the ship leaving Senegal and get a new car with an American flag on the back. The bike is stolen by a savage Caucasian character and finally crashed by him. The way this final sequence is shot reminded me of Un Chien Andalou.
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In the famous experimental film the male characters' hand is lost to the street in a, surreally cinematographically, similar manner to the bike being lost in the end of Touki Bouki.
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In both instances, the discarding of ones personal belongings to a street being associated with destruction uncannily expresses an identity lost to a female. In Touki Bouki specifically, this crash and surreal moment call the main character, Mory, off the ship with his girlfriend (who presumably stays on and goes to France). One is left wondering in the final reflections of the film if the call to France that composes much of the anarchy in this film is a more symbolic and lustful escape of self for Mory.
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Mory clings to the icon of his motorbike; the ship to France departs; a reflection of an earlier scene of lust with his girlfriend; a ship passes; the image of the child on the cow ends the film. This appears to be the cycle of the narrative; a movement from peace to destruction as associated with the image of a cow for Mory, one imbued with the passing of a ship - a movement into the unconscious, yet a return to land.
This is evidently not a film to be articulated and understood thoroughly, though its symbology is striking. The images speak a strange story and draw one to Mambéty's own view of cinema and African filmmaking:
“Oral tradition is a tradition of images. What is said is stronger than what is written; the word addresses itself to the imagination, not the ear. Imagination creates the image and the image creates cinema, so we are in direct lineage as cinema’s parents.”
