White Material (2009)
This film is one long depiction of stubbornness and waiting the for the inevitable. Isabelle Huppert in the role of a owner of a coffee plantation in Africa when civil war breaks out. Despite warnings from the French military that they can’t protect her or her family and urges them to flee, she refuses and stays behind with her family. All the workers on the plantation flees as well, leaving no one to handle the upcoming harvest.
In some ways it is an apt and interesting portrayal of colonial white privilege blindness, but it is also very much a “one note” film. Everything that happens is inevitable and the viewer can see it right from the beginning, just our main characters can’t. This makes the story less tragic and more of a predictable downturn.
Rating: 3