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.
