Is it enough that The Mauritanian provides one of those all too rare (these days) moments when Jodie Foster reminds us she can carry a picture? It ought to be, really; Foster is that rarest of Hollywood stars, the one who can remind us, in moments, how we've missed her intelligence and that calm knowing presence behind her eyes. If she picked it, well, you know there must be something to it.
And yes, there's a lot here, in The Mauritanian, the first film to tackle the stories out of Guantanamo Bay and the prisoners held there. Unfortunately, most of what's there is largely sketched at, suggested and implied. Well designed, and ably directed by Kevin Macdonald to provide just the right amount of fresh outrage, The Mauritanian, for all of Foster's best efforts, is just not quite big enough, or surprising enough, for the searing indictment it seems to hope to be.
Foster plays Nancy Hollander, a prominent human rights attorney based in New Mexico who was asked to look into the case of a Mauritanian man being held by the American government at the request of his mother, via officials of the Mauritanian government. Mohamadou Slahi had been picked up for some suspicious phone activity in the aftermath of 9/11 and, as it turned out, had been transferred to Guatanamo Bay shortly after the base had been converted to receive the various Muslim prisoners held in the Middle East and elsewhere.
One doesn't have to be very well informed to know where the film is headed, but Slahi's case turns out to be a good Example A of how broken and perverted the search for justice has been and will be at Gitmo. Hollander's methodical approach to compiling a record of Slahi's confinement, combined with Slahi's own intelligence, positive attitude and storytelling, makes for a compelling narrative of a heavy handed process that quickly lost its way. Gradually, as the layers peel away, it becomes clear that whatever tangential case federal authorities might have put together on Slahi, or anyone else, has been lost in the ugly morass of "extreme measures" - or more accurately, torture - used on him.
And here's where the film, well intentioned as it is, runs into a bit of a snag: depicting torture is hard, especially in a way that both dramatizes the brutality without, well, reveling in it. For better and worse, The Mauritanian sketches at the worst of Slahi's treatment, and while it's intense and uncomfortable, it's also a bit third hand and cautious. Slahi's story, while deeply compelling, and clearly drawn around his inner strengths, is at heart an intimate look at the difficult journey of one man. For what it is, the film tells that small story well. In terms of being a full-on, wholesale indictment of the whole ugly ball of wax that GItmo was and is... there's just not quite enough here to make that larger argument.
In some ways, this is a talky two hander between Foster's Hollander and Slahi, and she is well matched by Tahar Rahim, probably most familiar to American audiences from A Prophet on Netflix. Rahim does terrific work finding and holding onto Slahi's humanity through what was clearly a nightmarish, horrific series of events. And, as I said, Foster is such a welcome presence onscreen that she makes her tough, no nonsense work here look easy, and necessary. Benedict Cumberbatch and Shailene Woodley also provide fine performances as the marine lawyer and Hollander's second chair, respectively, both gradually radicalized by the injustices they are forced to confront.
Will an audience be similarly radicalized? I'm not sure The Mauritanian, for all it's strengths, winds up telling most people something they didn't already know. Nor does it really address or resolve the questions that linger - knowing what we do know, what do we do now? What do we do with the prisoners who remain? Can anything, really, make an entirely messed up moment right again? At best, the film gives us one man's poignant journey. What it can't fix - or really even comprehend - is how so many did so many bad things trying to... well, whatever it was, we lost sight of it, long ago. No one, really, should have been treated like The Mauritanian. Being forced, via The Mauritanian to confront those events, unfortunately, doesn't necessarily tell us what to do with what we now know.
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