Four stars. Rated PG-13, for grim images and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.9.15
The original plan, as envisioned
by producers Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald, was to turn Malala Yousafzai’s
saga into a big-screen drama.
Parkes and MacDonald had plenty
of experience with such films, having shepherded (among others) Gladiator, The Kite Runner and Catch Me If You Can, the latter also based on a
real-world individual whose exploits were larger than life.
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| During a visit to a rare African school that caters to girls, Malala Yousafzai asks her new friends what they wish to do in life: become doctors, historians, lawyers? Her proud father, Ziauddin, can be seen at the far right. |
But a funny thing happened, when
Parkes and MacDonald met Malala in Birmingham, England, where she and her
family have moved for their safety.
“No actor could possibly portray
Malala,” Parkes later admitted. “She’s just so singular.”
As a result, Parkes and MacDonald
decided that a documentary approach would be a vastly superior means of
allowing viewers to meet Malala on her own terms, and in her own environment.
They turned to veteran documentarian Davis Guggenheim, well respected for the
thoughtful, absorbing approach he has taken to earlier projects such as It
Might Get Loud, Waiting for Superman and his Academy Award-winning An
Inconvenient Truth.
Smart choice.
Malala Yousafzai is an amazing
young woman; she’s also an endearing and captivating screen presence who is quite
capable of telling her own story. At the same time, she’s a fascinating bottle
of contradictions: at one moment a bubbly teenager clearly embarrassed by her
girl-crushes on hunky cricket stars, and then — in the blink of an eye — a
ferociously intelligent presence quite capable of delivering a powerful speech
to the assembled body at the United Nations.
She’s Mother Teresa, Jane
Goodall, Aung San Suu Kyi and Amelia Earhart, all rolled up into one precociously
charismatic package. And to think: We almost lost her before learning about the
work she’d already done in Pakistan’s Taliban-infested Swat Valley ... let
alone the impact she continues to have after surviving a heinous assassination
attempt.
Malala was 12 when she began
writing an impressively detailed — and, of necessity, anonymous — blog for the
BBC, expressing her very personal reaction as the initially welcomed Taliban disciples
gradually revealed their true colors: banning music, television and any hint of
Western culture; severely curtailing schooling for girls; and insisting that
women remain shuttered in their own homes.
It didn’t stop there. When
Taliban thugs began bombing police stations and schools, and naming “infidels” during
much-feared radio broadcasts, Malala bravely abandoned her anonymity and began
speaking out, highly visibly, in the international press. She was awarded
Pakistan’s inaugural National Youth Peace Prize in 2011.
Shortly thereafter, the Taliban
marked her for assassination.
They carried out that threat when
a heavily armed Taliban brigade intercepted her school bus on Oct. 9, 2012. A
gunman asked for her by name and then shot her three times; two of her friends
also were wounded. They received “only” relatively minor injuries; everybody
expected Malala to die from the bullet that shattered her skull.
She surprised everybody.
Reconstructive surgery and
rehabilitation subsequently took place at Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth
Hospital; Guggenheim’s film includes some of that footage, and it’s very hard
to watch. The toughest moments, for me at least, come during early physical
therapy sessions, as Malala tries — and fails — to catch a large ball gently
tossed toward her. She simply can’t make it work: Her reactions are too slow,
the eye/hand coordination utterly absent. It’s shattering.
By now, savvy followers of
current events know a fair amount about Malala, her already high profile having
been enhanced by “good works” throughout the globe on behalf of endangered
children and worldwide access to education, particularly for girls. But I’ll
wager that very few people realize that her father, Ziauddin, is — and was — an
equally outspoken Taliban critic.
Indeed, as he admits during the
voice-over narration that he shares with his daughter throughout this film, one
day he heard his own name on that dread Taliban radio broadcast.
Ziauddin took after HIS father,
famed orator Rohul Amin Yousafzai. Ziauddin grew up to become an educational
activist who ran his own school; he therefore encouraged his first-born child,
despite her gender, to embrace an education. She apparently needed no
encouragement; it’s certainly no accident that Guggenheim’s film crew, during
the almost two years they spent with the Yousafzai family, frequently caught
Malala doing her homework.
School in Birmingham, she
confesses on camera, is much harder than what she remembers of her class work
back home in the Swat Valley ... in part because the subjects and cultural
references are so much more wide-ranging. One of the film’s many droll moments
comes when Malala shares a bulletin board covered with sticky-notes of phrases
she has struggled to understand, such as the term “cat burglar.”
That touch of humor is one of
this film’s profound strengths, and Malala isn’t the only one with a disarming
smile and natural talent for witty one-liners. We get many spontaneous scenes
of daily life in the Yousafzai household, when everybody — if only briefly —
clearly forgot that cameras were rolling (and then generously permitted such
footage to be used).
Malala’s two younger brothers —
Khushal and Atal — are a hoot, particularly when playfully dissing their sister
... to her feigned horror. All of them, along with their father, speak very
clear English; they’re a lively, boisterous and loving family unit.
Which of course also includes
their mother, Toor Pekai. But she’s a more serious case; she doesn’t speak
English that well — although she’s learning — and she mourns her family’s
forced removal from the lush Swat Valley. Malala also longs to return, but
knows that she cannot; Taliban goons continue to vow their determination to
exterminate her.
Guggenheim’s biggest challenge,
as a filmmaker, concerned the necessity of re-creating Malala’s early life. She
and her father have strong memories and are capable narrators, but — aside from
a handful of snapshots, which appear from time to time — there’s no record of
this time period. They didn’t possess the video capabilities that we now take
for granted.
Guggenheim therefore turned to
animator Jason Carpenter, who made some waves with his 2011 student short, The
Renter. Carpenter and his team illustrate these past events in a soft pastel
“chalk” style that evokes classical painters such as Andrew Wyeth. It’s a clever
artistic choice, as it evokes memory, nostalgia and a longing for what was
lost, while at the same time complementing the mythic, storybook quality that
Malala and her father bring to their anecdotes.
Guggenheim introduces this
reliance on animation quite ingeniously, employing it to depict the 19th
century Pashtun heroine who gave Malala her name. Having initially accepted
this narrative device under such logical circumstances, we more readily embrace
it later, when repeatedly employed to travel into a more recent past where
Guggenheim’s cameras also couldn’t travel.
The film concludes with the
dramatic finale to Malala’s impassioned speech at the United Nations, on July
12, 2013: “One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world.
Education is the only solution.”
And
don’t abandon your seats too quickly, as the end credits begin their march
across the screen ... because Guggenheim has built to one more thrilling moment
from his heroine’s recent career, and you won’t want to miss it.
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