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osprey_archerWadjda! I knew I had left a movie off my movie list yesterday but I just couldn’t think what it was, but now I have remembered: Wadjda!
Wadjda was the first movie that Saudi Arabia submitted for the Best Foreign Film Oscar, and that reason alone would have made me curious about it. But it turns out to be relevant to my interests (and quite well done) aside from that. Young Wadjda, an outgoing schoolgirl with some flair for the dramatic, has set her heart on acquiring a beautiful green bicycle, never mind that girls aren’t supposed to ride bikes.
The heroine, Wadjda, is an enterprising lass: she reminds me of Tom in The Great Brain novels, who finds a way to turn almost everything into a money-making opportunity. She sells soccer team bracelets and mix tapes to her classmates. She helps an older girl arrange a meeting with a boy, getting money out of both of them for her trouble. When she first starts to learn how to ride (borrowing her friend Abdullah’s bike), Abdullah makes fun of her when she falls off. She starts crying, and Abdullah offers her five riyals to stop. Wadjda is not so upset that she doesn’t stick out her hand.
(Abdullah inevitably suggests that they should get married when they grow up. If they could arrange it, I suspect that would be a good thing for everyone, because Wadjda clearly needs a husband who knows and embraces the fact that she’s a congenital limit-pusher.)
Most of all, Wadjda signs up for a Koranic recitation competition at her school, which has a prize just large enough to cover the cost of her bicycle. The movie is in a sense the setting for the jewel that is Wadjda’s Koranic recitation at the competition. Her recitation is lovely in itself, but it has extra emotional impact because it’s tied so integrally to her goals, and the fact that we’ve heard to practice so many times means that we can appreciate better how much skill is involved. We’ve heard Wadjda go from barely being able to read the Koran to practicing a fairly decent recitation with her mother; but we didn’t know Wadjda could recite it like this.
Wadjda was the first movie that Saudi Arabia submitted for the Best Foreign Film Oscar, and that reason alone would have made me curious about it. But it turns out to be relevant to my interests (and quite well done) aside from that. Young Wadjda, an outgoing schoolgirl with some flair for the dramatic, has set her heart on acquiring a beautiful green bicycle, never mind that girls aren’t supposed to ride bikes.
The heroine, Wadjda, is an enterprising lass: she reminds me of Tom in The Great Brain novels, who finds a way to turn almost everything into a money-making opportunity. She sells soccer team bracelets and mix tapes to her classmates. She helps an older girl arrange a meeting with a boy, getting money out of both of them for her trouble. When she first starts to learn how to ride (borrowing her friend Abdullah’s bike), Abdullah makes fun of her when she falls off. She starts crying, and Abdullah offers her five riyals to stop. Wadjda is not so upset that she doesn’t stick out her hand.
(Abdullah inevitably suggests that they should get married when they grow up. If they could arrange it, I suspect that would be a good thing for everyone, because Wadjda clearly needs a husband who knows and embraces the fact that she’s a congenital limit-pusher.)
Most of all, Wadjda signs up for a Koranic recitation competition at her school, which has a prize just large enough to cover the cost of her bicycle. The movie is in a sense the setting for the jewel that is Wadjda’s Koranic recitation at the competition. Her recitation is lovely in itself, but it has extra emotional impact because it’s tied so integrally to her goals, and the fact that we’ve heard to practice so many times means that we can appreciate better how much skill is involved. We’ve heard Wadjda go from barely being able to read the Koran to practicing a fairly decent recitation with her mother; but we didn’t know Wadjda could recite it like this.
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Date: 2013-12-30 03:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-30 03:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-30 03:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-30 05:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-30 05:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-16 02:21 am (UTC)Anyway, I really loved it--thank you so much for the recommendation.
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Date: 2014-03-16 04:46 pm (UTC)And argh, her father. He behaves like such a child, getting himself a new wife without seeming to think about what that will do to Wadjda. At least Wadjda has her mother, who works with her on her recitation - and buys her the bicycle in the end, after the headmistress took Wadjda's prize money away.
My memories of some of the secondary characters are a little rusty, so I don't remember the thief story? In any case, I think you're right that the headmistress is complicit with the expectations of the world, and she's probably marked Wadjda down in her mind as incorrigible for announcing that she plans to use her recitation prize money to buy a bicycle - as if Wadjda were the devil citing scripture for her own purposes. I wonder what happens for Wadjda after the movie: I hope the headmistress's suspicion of her doesn't hurt Wadjda too much. But it seems unlikely that Wadjda will learn how to lay low...