The Mauritanian
Director: Kevin Macdonald Starring: Jodie Foster, Tahar Rahim, Zachary Levi
When Kevin Macdonald set out to make “The Mauritanian,” the director must have found himself identifying to some degree with defense attorney Nancy Hollander. The lawyer, played here by Jodie Foster, braved insult and scorn when she took up the case of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who was arrested in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. At the time (and likely to this day), many in the U.S. military believed Slahi to be involved in aiding and perhaps even recruiting the hijackers who flew the planes into the World Trade Center. He had confessed as much under torture — but then, who wouldn’t? For Hollander, taking Slahi’s side was an extremely unpopular position, and one that Macdonald — a Scottish filmmaker who has been repeatedly drawn to hot-button political topics and controversial characters — embraces with a righteous fervor. No one can accuse Macdonald, who is not American, of being unpatriotic, though they can certainly reject a movie that goes against their own sense of how the U.S. military should have responded to 9/11. The director’s challenge then is to oer Slahi’s side of the story, which he opts to do without necessarily delving into the complicated past that gave American authorities reason to suspect him. There are references to a phone
call he received from Osama bin Laden’s line and an open history with al-qaida, which had been fighting on the same side as the Americans when Slahi was a liated with the organization, but the script — credited to M.B. Traven, Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani — clearly doesn’t share the U.S. government’s conviction that its highest-value detainee was handled appropriately. “The Mauritanian” is a tough movie, and not an easy one to enjoy, marking the polar opposite of the gung-ho fightterrorism-at-any-cost attitude of post9/11 productions such as “24” and “Zero Dark Thirty,” in which the ends justify the means. But it fits within other well-established Hollywood genres — most notably, those that fancy themselves a check on government malfeasance — and as such, “The Mauritanian” delivers the shock, outrage and ultimate comeuppance that audiences expect from cynical anticorruption sagas like “Rendition” and “The Report.” Slahi is beaming when we meet him in the opening scene, attending a Mauritanian wedding ceremony interrupted by his arrest. Despite all he endures over the coming years, Slahi never loses the capacity to smile. This disarmingly upbeat son/husband is played by French actor Tahar Rahim, whose sleeping-tiger performance in the 2009 prison saga “A Prophet” positioned him as a young Robert De Niro — a serious, sweet-looking actor with impressive depth and the capacity to hide his characters’ true intentions. Rahim has continued to impress over the subsequent decade, but remains largely unknown to American viewers. This allows for a shrewd casting opportunity on Macdonald’s part: While audiences project the usual Hollywood-instilled biases upon Slahi at first, the director has lined up one of the best actors of his generation to play the role — a character we’re never meant to fully know, and yet are invited to identify with all the same, enough to recognize that no one deserves to be held for eight years without being formally charged with a crime. No matter how complex Slahi might be, the film argues that his situation is simple: Unless proven guilty, he must be freed. Playing the woman who dares confront this presumed monster, Foster brings different associations to her part. Naturally, some will be reminded of “The Silence of the Lambs,” in which she comes face-toface with a criminal mastermind, although “The Mauritanian” doesn’t encourage the idea that she is being manipulated. Rather, it is Hollander who reaches out to Slahi, whose presence at Guantanamo Bay is so secret that it’s a Kaaesque task just to confirm that he’s “not not there.” Guantanamo Bay, we realize, serves as a kind of black hole in the American justice system, a lawless void into which people are thrown without any notice being shared with their loved ones — or as Hollander puts it, “They built this place out of the reach of the court for a reason.” It is her mission to bring constitutional protection to this prison, where “special measures” for interrogating prisoners were approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld just prior to Slahi being turned over to military intelligence. “You haven’t seen what I’ve seen,” rigidly by-the-book military prosecutor Lt. Col. Stuart Crouch (Benedict Cumberbatch) tells Hollander over beers near the Gitmo gift shop, but his words just hang in the air. Of course she hasn’t seen the evidence Crouch has. It’s highly classified, making it all but impossible for Hollander and her associate, Teri Duncan (Shailene Woodley), to defend a client whom the military hasn’t formally accused of a crime. “The Mauritanian” starts slow, allowing room for audience skepticism toward Slahi as it braids multiple timelines to somewhat disorienting e£ect, intercutting how he was treated in military custody with Hollander’s crusade to liberate him. But the story gains momentum as it goes, and by the end, it’s positively gripping. In tough-guy American television series, characters like Jack Bauer use extreme tactics to get fast, accurate information, but that’s not what Macdonald shows happening here. From waterboarding to forced sexual intercourse, the methods are meant to break the prisoners, but they may just as e£ectively destroy our confidence in the system. Over the course of the film’s too-long two-hour-plus running time, we come to empathize with this man, whom Rahim plays with uncommon gentleness. Most people in his shoes would be outraged. Instead, Slahi prays, he performs his ablutions, he escapes into flashbacks about his wife and family, and he tries to make any kind of connection with his captors. Most surprising, he pardons. Imagine that: A film about vengeance, in which the commander in chief calls for “rough justice,” argues that the way to escape the cycle of terror is not with force but forgiveness.
CREDITS: An STX Entertainment release of an Stxfilms, 30West, Topic Studios presentation, in association with BBC Films, Great Point Media of a Shadowplay Features, Sunnymarch, Wonder Street production. Producers: Adam Ackland, Leah Clarke, Benedict Cumberbatch, Lloyd Levin, Beatriz Levin, Mark Holder, Christine Holder, Branwen Prestwood Smith, Michael Bronner. Co-producers: Donald Sabourin, Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Larry Siems. Executive producers: Micah Green, Daniel Steinman, Dan Friedkin, Michael Bloom, Maria Zuckerman, Ryan Heller, Zak Kilberg, Russell Smith, Robert Halme, Jim Reeve, Rose Garnett, Robert Simonds, Adam Fogelson, John Friedberg. Director: Kevin Macdonald. Screenplay: M.B. Traven, Rory Haines & Sohrab Noshirvani; story: Traven, based upon the book “Guantánamo Diary” by Mohamedou Ould Slahi, edited by Larry Siems. Camera: Alwin H. Küchler. Editor: Justine Wright. Music: Tom Hodge. Reviewed online, Paris, Jan. 6, 2021. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 129 MIN. Cast: Jodie Foster, Tahar Rahim, Zachary Levi, Saamer Usmani, Shailene Woodley, Benedict Cumberbatch
‘The Mauritanian’ delivers the shock, outrage and ultimate comeuppance that audiences expect from cynical anti-corruption sagas.”