(gentle music)
Welcome to this short lecture on Mati Diop's
"Atlantique" and tidal presence and absence.
Today, I'm going to briefly introduce the film
"Atlantique" which is directed by Mati Diop.
I'm going to consider the question,
what kind of crisis is represented in this film?
And I'm going to do that via a focus on particular
on images and sounds of the Atlantic Ocean itself,
which really takes center stage in this film.
So "Atlantique" was released in 2019
and it's a feature film directed by Mati Diop.
She had previously made a documentary on the same theme,
10 years previously, and later developed the story into a full feature.
It was shot in only seven weeks
and went on to win the Grand Prix at Cannes Film Festival.
The film happens mostly in Wolof
and is set in the capital of Senegal, Dakar,
and in particular in a neighborhood called
Tiahouille, which borders the Atlantic.
The main characters are Ada, who you see on the film
poster there, Suleiman, the young man she loves,
and Omar, the wealthier and more preferable choice
of husband that her family have decided on for her.
The relationship between Ada and Suleiman
is established early on in the film, but very soon Suleiman leaves.
As Ada hears, the boys have gone out to sea, all of them in a boat.
Ada learns this by surprise.
She turns up at a club hoping to spend the night
with Suleiman and her other girlfriends,
only to discover that all of the young men
have left on a boat, hoping to reach Spain.
All the girls are left at this club and what was
supposed to be a party turns into a kind of wake.
I'll not give spoilers and invite you to watch the rest of the film
to discover the surprising things that happen next.
So to think about the term migrant crisis,
what this film really shows is what Diop
describes as a moral and political crisis.
That is to say the emphasis is consistently placed
on the context which drives the boys to make this decision to leave.
The film opens on a building site
where all of the young men are complaining
that they haven't been paid for three months
and the salaries do not seem to be forthcoming.
The context of Tiaroy as a neighborhood
is one of unfinished building work and economic precarity.
And against this backdrop stands the Muezzin Tower.
This is a hyper modern building
which stands towering over everything else as a symbol of capitalism.
And yet the boys are jobless and without prospects
and this drives them to make their terrible decision.
At the same time, the Atlantic Ocean appears
again and again in the film and stands as an embodiment of oppression,
both historically of the transatlantic slave trade
and of the ongoing exploitation of black bodies
who are over exploited and undervalued.
In other words, the economic significance
and the deathly past and present of the Atlantic is always there.
So this appears in the film, both visually in
images of the Atlantic and also in the soundscape
and we hear the wind and waves of the Atlantic often.
Most often in terms of image, the Atlantic appears as a wide shot
and these shots that fill the whole screen
both bookend and act as interludes for the movie.
That is to say, it's the first thing we
hear and the last thing we hear and see.
The waves vary, sometimes it's calm as in
the picture here, sometimes it's rougher,
sometimes there are really large waves and lots of wind.
And the light varies too.
When Suleyman first looks out at the Atlantic, it's really misty.
On another occasion, there's bright light from the sun.
At another point, the Atlantic is under darkness
and the only light comes from the boats of fishermen.
And when Ada walks along the beach at dawn,
the light is blurred and slightly dull.
In terms of sound then, we hear waves and wind,
both at the opening and the closing credits.
And at other points, as these interlude images of the Atlantic appear,
we hear unsettling music in a minor key
alongside wails and spectral sounds,
almost like ghosts are crying and singing from beyond the grave.
At another point, when the beach is in view,
we hear a voiceover as the boys explain their
own deaths via one of the girls left behind.
Pierre Forfay has argued that this kind of
ambient noise which continues throughout the film
allows us to engage with those who are no longer visible.
That is to say, once the boys have gone
out of sight, they can still be heard.
What you see when you watch the film
is that the camera's perspective onto the Atlantic
is almost always that of either Suleyman or Ada,
from a truck, the beach, the club, the roof of Ada's family home.
And in these ways, we see the Atlantic as representing
both hope in terms of the desperate solution
to the financial bind the young men are in not being paid.
And then of course later, it represents loss,
death, and the ongoing grief for those left behind.
So it stands for possibility and invitation and also huge danger.
M. Jackie Alexander has described the heavy Atlantic
and Dieppe herself has called it a haunted place.
And this sense really pervades the film.
I'd like to revisit the term migrant crisis then
and think about those who are involved,
not only the young men who are forced to leave,
but also all those young women left behind
and how they adjust their lives in the wake of that loss.
There is agency in the choice to go
and the decisions taken by those left behind.
There is ongoing life.
There are relationships that endure beyond the age of 18
and there are relationships that continue beyond that age.
And beyond death in quite surprising ways if you watch the film.
And there's also a really prominent sense of revenge.
In their ongoing connections then
between the young men and young women beyond death,
they continue to relate and in this way, insist on their humanity.
And in their actions, they insist on
their agency as being more than victims.
I would suggest that it is the tidal movement,
the ways that the Atlantic comes back again
and again, visually and in terms of soundscape.
At the heart of this wonderful film
that keeps bringing these things to our attention.
We have the presence of the looming Atlantic
to remind us of this agency, this humanity
and also the painful weight of history
inherent in the film's title, "Atlantique.
" I'll leave you with some further reading in case of interest.
(gentle music)