Kirikou and the Sorceress Review

The film tells the story of Kirikou, a tiny and seemingly magical little boy who initiates his own birth after speaking to his mother out of the womb and being told that any boy who can speak from the womb can surely handle his own birth. The boy emerges walking and talking, gifted with super speed and natural wisdom and filled with questions. When he learns that his uncle is the last surviving young man in the village and that his uncle is currently on the road to face the Sorceress believed to have eaten Kirikou’s father and the rest of the village’s warriors and also to have stopped the village’s water supply, Kirikou races off to help. With Kirikou’s help the uncle is able to trick the Sorceress into restoring the water flow and returns to the village a hero. But the victory is short lived as the Sorceress soon sees through the trick and steps up her oppression of the village.

Kirikou takes it on himself to discover what makes the Sorceress so cruel and to free his village from oppression, setting off on a quest that pits him against enchanted trees and magical, mechanical warriors as he befriends animals and sets off over a mountain to find his grandfather – a mysterious wise man living inside a giant, magical termite mound – and gain the knowledge he needs. It’s a film that champions the power of the small while gently teaching the importance of tolerance and of the environment, all packaged up in gorgeous, vibrant colors and featuring a fantastic soundtrack from Youssou N’Dour.

Much like the work of Studio Ghibli or last year’s Triplets of Belleville, Kirikou and the Sorceress provides a much need shock to the system of the North American animation world, a world becoming increasingly bland and homogenized in its storytelling approach. The film is intensely specific in its approach, intensely non-North American, but rather than being isolated or proving inaccessible to non-Africans the film proves the universal power of myth and story, proves that recontextualizing these familiar issues this way can give them a new power.

The DVD, just released by Facets, gives the film a solid presentation, though it is a little spare on features. This is a film that cries out for a loaded to the gills special edition and, sadly, it has so little profile on these shores that it is unlikely to ever get one. There is one serious quirk in he video – the skin tones shift fairly dramatically in different scenes, at times being dark enough to obscure facial features – but, having noticed this issue in still shots from different editions of the film, I believe the inconsistency comes from the animation work being farmed out to a handful of different studios rather than being something specific to this DVD.

Kirikou and the Sorceress comes with my highest recommendation. A truly great film that truly deserves to find an appreciative audience. There are apparently two new Kirikou films in different stages of production right now. Here’s hoping they find us more receptive.