I watched White Material a few weeks ago from an unusual vantage point: I had succumbed to my first cold in over a year, and since I had just completed a satisfying number of paid assignments, I saw no plausible reason to not languish in my sick-bed for one or two days until I started to feel better. After all, rest is the best treatment for the common cold, unless you simply can’t afford to take the time to be sick… in which case one might consider striking a Faustian bargain with the diabolical concoction, Theraflu. I actually considered taking that route, until I found myself standing in Duane Reade, looking at the list of ingredients and cautions on the Theraflu packaging. No thanks. Not this time.

Wait. What’s this got to do with White Material? I’m just setting the scene, so that you might understand my initial appraisal of White Material. As I lay in bed watching the movie on an aging, non-flat-screen TV, my on-and-off feverish near-delirium allowed me an intimate connexion to this story of the the absurd sequence of events which accompany the demise of colonial authority. The non-linear narrative style took some time to sync-in to, but the pieces started fitting together soon enough. In the end, I was left feeling that the situation in this symbolic, unspecified African country was near hopeless. Not good MovieNight material, I thought.

In the days that followed, though, scenes remembered from White Material tracked me like the soulful eyes of a begging dog, and I realized that I had to share this one. Judging from the number of unoccupied seats (none!), I did the right thing. Of course, White Material was not a feel-good experience, and not to everyone’s taste! In one amusing MovieNight moment, Flea started growling and barking at a particularly menacing-looking group of rebels (ah… the reality of Blu-ray) and one first-time (and last?) guest heckled, “Yeah. I know. Terrible movie, right?” Ya think?

More about this film on IMDb