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The Criterion Channel Presents: Kirikou and the Sorceress (1998)


One of the only animated movies you’ll find on the Criterion Channel (though also Watership Down and The Last Unicorn –which is cool!) is Kirikou and the Sorceress, the acclaimed 1998 French film from Michel Ocelot drawn extensively from the folklore and mythologies of West Africa. It may well have been the first animated film to feature an entirely black cast, both in the figures animated and their voice actors, all of whom were African-French or Senegalese. There’s an overwhelming African richness to the aesthetic as well, the architecture and depth of field and colour schemes. For a movie made by a lot of white guys, it comes across as exceptionally authentic and non-patronizing –to the point of being censored from release for a time in the U.S. and U.K.
Perhaps the most famous thing about Kirikou is that fact and the prolific nudity that accounted for it. Most of the characters in the film spend the duration of it at least partially naked in the entirely casual, non-sexual manner characteristic of culture, society, and history in that part of Africa. But of course in the English-speaking western world, such a perception of nudity is impossible, and the sheer volume of it as well as its’ presence in what is otherwise a family film and a cartoon was too much for distributors in those countries. And it’s a shame that aspect of the film (which eventually you get accustomed to) overshadows the movies’ visual and narrative beauty.
Kirikou is about a precocious and extremely intelligent infant who takes it upon himself to defeat the sorceress Karaba, who is suppressing his village and has supposedly devoured all but one of the community’s grown men. This quest takes the form of a series of episodes in which he foils her various machinations and saves the village before confronting her head-on. He also has super-speed. It’s a very simple story, much like the oral legends it is based on, and along the way, the film delights with the vivacity of its’ animation that matches this world perfectly. Though the film is traditionally animated, and on a computer, it’s very clear Ocelot has a background in silhouette animation of the kind innovated by Lotte Reiniger. The films’ characters exist in three dimensions, but they’re most often depicted in profile or portrait, their movement somewhat limited, and the flat backdrops behind them might be directly lifted from a Reiniger film for their stylized patterns and shapes. The imagery this gives way to is rustic and down to earth, wild but in a naturalistic way. And yet the magic of the film takes on what may appear to be science-fiction connotations, in Karaba’s robot-like minion fetishes (as in supernatural objects, minds out of the gutter please!) and the hidden crystal palace of Kirikous’ grandfather. It fits though, and seems itself to be an extension of the folkloric influences rather than a warping of them.
The fairy tale nature of the story excuses much of its leaps in disbelief, as well as a couple choices towards the end that one might consider dubious. Even within this though, and with all of the characters archetypes, the movie engages in a universal humanism and an optimist spirit that demonstrates why these kind of stories have lasted through the centuries and crossed cultures. It’s not just the weird shit like puncturing an elephant or an evil boat whisking children away. Kirikou was successful enough at least in France to spawn two sequels (or midquels rather, being set within the timeline of this story) as well as a stage adaptation. Clearly, the appetite for such simple tales is still there.
 
Criterion Recommendation: Moonlight (2016)
Having won a Best Picture Oscar, Moonlight might have been deemed too populist for Criterion consideration …but then Parasite got a Criterion edition, so so should it. Moonlight wasn’t really like a lot of the movies that actually win that award, though it seemed like it was -something it shared with its’ biggest competitor with which it’s unfortunately become popularly linked. But separate from its’ Oscar and separate from La La Land, Moonlight deserves to stand on its’ own. A beautiful character study on blackness, queerness, poverty, and identity, Barry Jenkins’ moody and stylish drama that showcases how circumstances shape an adolescence is an exceptional, educating film that is also damn impressive to watch. The cast, from Trevante Rhodes and Ashton Sanders to Naomie Harris, Andre Holland, and the scene-stealing Mahershala Ali -most of whom I’d never heard of before, are now performers who demand our attention on whatever they do. And the imagery of the film will last for decades to come.

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