The ambiguous objective history evolved into the immediate slaughter, in which witness found no executioners or saviors. The outbreak of the film is focused on a moment, when everything is laid out in a logical. The quest for reason tends to ignore humanity itself. Therefore, the movie portrays the firmness itself in the ambiguous background. It was the unsolved curse between the blood and the earth, and the perfect performance of Isabelle Huppert.

A story of a distressed woman willing to die and sacrifice her own family rather than giving up some acres of land somewhere in the middle of nowhere merely to prove (to none) that she is not afraid.Isabelle Huppert provides as always an excellent and charming neurotic character. Her character is brave and determined but the whole objective of her determination makes no sense at all.Overall, the script is pretty poor. It is not certain if the movie wants to talk about female neurosis, ignorant expatriates behavior, social revolution, oppressed against colonizers, black and white or simply tell the story of how someone can get blind by her own ego.Nice photography of landscapes, some minutes of enjoying to see Huppert acting and absolutely nothing more.

Set in an unnamed African country embroiled in a brutal civil war after transitioning from French colonialism to independence, the insanity of war has never received a more graphic portrayal than in Claire Denis' White Material. Named to reflect the contempt in which blacks hold the white colonialists, it is a film gripped by tension, violence, and eventual madness, but with a strong sense of place and a remarkable feeling of authenticity. Though White Material is less elliptical than many of her films which entice viewers to fill in the gaps with their own imagination, its lack of background information and non-linear chronology can make it, at least initially, a somewhat disorienting experience.Running a coffee plantation in the midst of the chaos, Maria Vial (Isabelle Huppert) lives with her ex-husband André (Christopher Lambert), her father-in-law Henri (Michel Subor) who owns the plantation, and her layabout teenage son, Manuel (Nicholas Duvauchelle). She insists on business as usual despite the fact that her workers have abandoned their jobs out of fear of the child soldiers who make up the bulk of the rebel army. Pursued by the government militia, a wounded rebel leader (Isaach De Bankole), known only as "the Boxer", takes refuge at the plantation, increasing the possibility of retaliation. Maria is warned by French soldiers from a helicopter that she should leave the country for her safety and that of her family, but she is proudly, if not blindly, determined to maintain the role that has always brought her security, though it is obvious from the first scene showing her alone on a road, that she has already been stripped of her colonial privileges. As author Andrew Sullivan once said, "When there's a challenge to our established world-view, whether from the absurd, the unexpected, the unpalatable, the confusing or the unknown, we experience a psychological force pushing back, trying to re-assert the things we feel are safe, comfortable and familiar."Refusing to face the inevitable, Maria goes into the village to recruit other workers, insisting that her coffee crop must be harvested, though it is unclear who she expects to sell it to. Without her knowledge, André begins to make arrangements to leave on his own and tries to make a deal with the mayor (William Nadylam) to sell the property. Even her son does not escape the madness. After being brutally attacked and stripped by young rebels, Manuel shaves off all of his hair, grabs a loaded rifle, and joins the rebel soldiers. In one of the most telling scenes, after several pharmacists are murdered, the rebel soldiers, who include both young boys and girls, sit on the grass ingesting the stolen drugs as if they were on a picnic. Despite the violence in White Material, there are some lovely moments evoked by cinematographer Yves Capes: wild dogs on a dirt road illuminated by the headlights of a car, the sounds of reggae music broadcasted by a disc jockey who promotes rebel causes, and the sight of Maria hanging onto the ladder of a bus filled with black refugees. Considering the depth and breadth of Denis' filmography, White Material may be a minor film, yet it is a graceful work of art, filled with a dreamlike quality that makes a strong statement about the dehumanizing effects of war, regardless of the rightness of the cause.

White Material promotes the idea of Africa as 'heart of darkness'. Having the action take place in an 'unnamed African country' has the effect of making the entire continent a locus for every kind of depravity and evil, because this could be 'anywhere and everywhere' on the continent. Giving no historical, social or political context for the events which unfold situates them outside of any framework and has the effect of portraying Africans as irrational: a racist discourse which has been sustained since the eighteenth century and on, when justifications had to be found firstly for slavery and then later on for colonial exploitation. I hope I ve read this film wrong because I enjoyed Denis' other film 35 Shots of Rum and, although I ve not seen it, I heard her film Chocolat is empathetic towards Africans.