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THE MAURITANIAN
Director: Kevin Macdonald Cast: Tahar Rahim, Jodie Foster, Benedict Cumberbatch, Shailene Woodley, Zachary Levi, Corey Johnson, Langley Kirkwood, David Fynn, Matthew Marsh MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 2:09 Release Date: 2/12/21; 4/20/21 (digital & on-demand) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 11, 2021 Two of the three narrative through lines of The Mauritanian are fascinating on some level, and one of them, which becomes the primary focus of this story, is a bit too familiar. The familiar one follows an attorney whose dedication to the rule and spirit of the law leads her to represent and fight for a client whose guilt seems apparent, but whose full story still has yet to be heard or even told. It makes sense that screenwriters M.B. Traven, Rory Haines, and Sohrab Noshirvani would follow this path closely and imbue much of the movie's passion with this character. She's a mouthpiece, not only for the accused man, but also for the movie's message: "The Constitution doesn't have an asterisk at the end—terms and conditions may apply." The main story, upon which the three through lines center, is based on the true one of Mohamedou Oould Slahi, a Mauritanian national, who received his college degree in Germany, held without criminal charges at the Guantánamo Bay military prison for more than a decade. He and those like him are the hypothetical, non-existent asterisk in the attorney's argument. The man deserves to go through the legal system for whatever crime of which the government suspects him. That's the rule of law, and if the government can't abide by it, the very spirit of the country and the rights of every person under its jurisdiction are at risk. It's a case that was made over and over again in the aftermath of the attacks on September 11, 2001, when a large percentage of ordinary people and representatives in the government believed that certain rights were worth putting on hold for certain people out of an abundance of caution or fear or anger or some combination of those feelings. Slahi's story is unique in that it was resolved 15 years after his initial detention, when people had more or less forgotten the existence of the detention camp in Cuba and the dozens of people still being held there without trial or charges. The screenwriters and director Kevin Macdonald clearly want to remind us that the debate, while seemingly resolved in the realm of public opinion and awareness, is still worth having. This story, which begins with the arrest of Mohamedou (Tahar Rahim) in his native Mauritania at the celebration of his niece's wedding, doesn't quite make that case, though. It's rehashing the old debate, somewhat settled by various courts, about the legal rights of people held by the U.S. government, instead of getting at how and why that debate has since transformed into something forgotten. The movie certainly tells two of its stories—Mohamedou's and the evolution of conscience of the man determined to see the captured man executed—with some passion and/or thoughtfulness. It's just difficult to make the case that this angle on the story is still the relevant one almost 20 years after the prison at Guantánamo Bay was established. A few years after Mohamedou is sent to Guantánamo on suspicion of recruiting people for the 9/11 attacks, attorney Nancy Hollander (Jodie Foster) decides to take his habeas corpus case, bringing along colleague Teri Duncan (Shailene Woodley). Moahmedou is reluctant to tell the attorneys the story of his time there. While Nancy and Teri try to convince their client and deal with a bureaucratic mess of redacted documents, Lt. Col. Stu Couch (Benedict Cumberbatch), a Marine Corps lawyer, is assigned to prosecute Mohamedou's case. He has a personal stake in this: His best friend was on the plane that was crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. While Nancy's side of this narrative is fairly routine (a lot of digging through documents, some doubt about her client's innocence, and no small amount of hitting home the movie's message), Stu's story adds an unexpected angle to the legal case. Here's a man, convinced he's doing the right and just thing, gradually realizing that his personal biases, the government's secrecy, and the actions of those establishing and operating the military prison in Cuba are getting and have gotten in the way of what's right and just. Macdonald crafts a particularly potent montage for one sequence, as the opposing attorneys discover the horrible truth about Mohamedou's imprisonment from different perspectives, telling the same story. The crux of the narrative, though, is Mohamedou's experience at the prison, gradually and then suddenly revealed after some questions about his guilt or innocence (The movie's initial fogginess on the issue is intriguing—implicitly asking if we feel the same way about his legal rights if he's potentially guilt—but disingenuous—since his inherently sympathetic portrayal answers the question for us). There are genuine horrors here—some of them well-known, such as waterboarding and sensory-depravation techniques, and others, like systematic rape, not as widely acknowledged. Rahim's subdued performance convincingly communicates the effects of trauma. Slahi's story certainly needs to be told, but the question is whether or not The Mauritanian does that story justice within the current discussion about what happened and is happening at Guantánamo Bay—or, more accurately, the near absence of that discussion. The movie tells and shows us a lot of what we've debated and known, but it's most powerful moment comes when a celebration is suddenly cut off for some tough reality. That silence is the story now. Copyright © 2021 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for violence including a sexual assault, and language)
