White Material

Film: White Material
Director: Claire Denis
Country: France

Claire Denis is a french woman who spent much of her childhood in coastal Africa in periods of racial conflict. White Material revisits Africa, following a French woman who runs a coffee plantation in an unnamed African country. At the beginning of the film, the french army is pulling out, and pleading with her from a helicopter to leave for her safety. She doesn't want to leave because, she says, the coffee crop is only a week away from being ripe. Later on it's subtly revealed that her real reason for not wanting to leave is that she just doesn't want to lose a place she considers home. But, all her African workers are leaving for their own safety. In this African country there's a civil war going on, lead by demagogues calling for the expulsion of 'White material', which is a phrase they use in general to describe imported wealth. She still tries to hire more workers and finish her crop in the face of obvious pending danger.

The only white characters in the movie are the main character and her family. Her son has been raised on this plantation and has become lazy and inept. We often see one white woman standing out on a bus full of black Africans. We also get the contrast of the luxurious mansion within the plantation against the more naturalistic settings of the rest of the film. She considers this African country her home, but she's isolated by her race and resented for her wealth. Her son, with no peers, has been born into this hostility. When he's attacked and robbed by kids who came onto the plantation through a hole in the fence, he goes wild and runs off looking for violence.

The film highlights the tension between the European world and the colonized third world, and their feeling of anger and helplessness against foreign wealth. As the film moves toward it's self-prophecized conclusion, and the violence gets closer to her as she runs out of funds to protect herself, we see that the main character knows she's in danger, but feels like nothing can happen to her on the land she considers her home. A lot of films that take place in third world countries are white guilt oriented or have very primitive portrayals of the locals. White Material doesn't have either of these issues. Both the white plantation owners and the black villagers and workers come off as being caught in the middle of a violent conflict they can't control, just trying to look after their own safety and welfare.

One complaint I have about the particular version of the film being shown in American theaters is they used all white subtitles, which are often hard to read against light backgrounds.

Style: 8
Substance: 9
Overall: 8
Accessibility: 4