Skip to main content

Wadjda


Wadjda Film Review 


Directed by Haifaa al-Mansour

 2012 ‧ Drama/World cinema ‧ 1h 38m

IMDB     Rotten Tomatoes    Metacritic 
7.5/10             99%                    81% 

My Rating 
✰✰✰✰


Haifaa al-Mansour's film Wadjda is a humble film about a young girl living in Saudi Arabia navigating several roadblocks in her quest to buy the bicycle of her dreams. A very simple plot but told from a perspective people in the West don't usually have access to. Sure we have plenty of "coming of age" films told from a perspective we recognize and can relate to but something very special about this film is how well it is able to make the viewer feel like they are part of the story. There are very few characters but I think this is a good thing since the writer can deeply develop the few characters they have instead of having too many characters at once but with little character development (a trend Western cinema has really gotten worse with recently). New York Times published a movie review about Wadjda and sums up pretty well what I think most of our thoughts are towards this film: "With impressive agility, “Wadjda” finds room to maneuver between harsh realism and a more hopeful kind of storytelling." The realities of Saudi Arabia are harsh but this story is told from a very hopeful and humanizing perspective which we don't get a chance to see very often with our media bombarding us with how oppressed and disenfranchised people (particularly women) in Saudi Arabia are. It shows a tale of a very adventurous girl I'm sure most of us could imagine in our everyday reality here as well. Some of us may have been that girl in fact. 

In general this is a movie that manages to be lighthearted and deals with subjects that are in fact the opposite but from the eyes of a curious young girl. The criticisms I may have are mostly from the fact that my personal taste in films aren't usually more "slice of life" dramas/comedies but I think I'll make an exception for this film. It feels refreshing and empowering in a way to see such dynamic characters presented with really great development. The film has a rather short run time but the only complaint I can think of is sometimes the plot really moved a bit too slowly and made the film feel longer than it actually was. But I think I'm biased in saying this since it seems like longer films are the trend in Hollywood and it's just what a lot of American movie goers are used to. Being the first film to actually be filmed in Saudi Arabia is impressive on its own but what's even more impressive is how charming and genuine this film is considering this was the director's debut film as well. It is well deserving of a 4/5 or around 4.5/5 rating and I think this will be a film I can recommend to other people who are curious about films from Saudi Arabia. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Captain Abu Raed

Captain Abu Raed Film Review Directed by Amin Matalqa  2007 ‧ Drama ‧ 1h 50m IMDB            Rotten Tomatoes           Slant Magazine                                          7.2/10                     80%                            1.5/4 My Rating  ✰✰✰ Captain Abu Raed is a heart warming tale about an elderly man working a lower class job in an airport as a janitor and how he saves and inspires the life of a young troubled kid. The first half of the film felt rather slow but it built up the character of Abu Raed fairly well in a way where we are able to understand why he is the way he is and how his upsetting past shaped him and his reactions to the people ar...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Square

The Square Documentary Review  Directed by Jehane Noujaim       2013 ‧ Drama/History ‧ 1h 48m  IMDB          Rotten Tomatoes    Metacritic  8.1/10                100%                   84% My Rating  ✰✰✰✰ The Academy nominated documentary "The Square" is an absolutely harrowing and yet inspiring look into the demonstrations leading into the revolution happening in Tahrir Square from 2011-2013. The documentary follows a few of the activists who stayed in Tahrir Square until President Hosni Mubarak left and continues to follow their journey as the people of Egypt try to establish a different type of government rule. Unfortunately this divided the country into different sects or groups with their own specific interests in mind. This documentary more closely follows just two groups: the liberal youths a...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Syrian Bride

The Syrian Bride Review  2004 ‧ Drama/Political drama ‧ 1h 37m IMDB  7.4/10             Rotten Tomatoes 88%            Roger Ebert 3/5 My Rating  ★★  The Syrian Bride (directed by Eran Riklis) is a drama about the plights of a family navigating bureaucratic troubles in order to marry their daughter Mona to a television comedian Tallel from Syria. In order to marry him she will not be able to return to her homeland of Israel and is very troubled by the thought of leaving her family behind. There are a lot of other subplots within the family members like Tallel's brother who married a Russian woman and because of this he is not on good terms with his family and also the story of the sister of the bride and how she wants to go back to school but her husband won't let her. These side plots are a bit confusing and don't really add much at all to the main story as they intertwine togethe...
Post a Comment
Read more