Red-Blooded Satire
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

PARIS, Present Day – A public park resplendent with poodle shaped topiary. Women in pink Chanel saunter past the Arc de Triomphe, a latter-day Impressionist dabbles his canvas, baguettes are everywhere. Quietly singing “Frere Jacques,” a little boy nibbles his ice-cream cone in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. Suddenly, he bumps against a dark, turbaned form – the terrorists! Ominous steel suitcases in hand, they glare at the little boy, and hiss in their strange tongue:
“Burqa-burqa-burqa, Mohammed Jihad! Jihad sherpa-sherpa -“
The sky explodes in red, white, and blue! Team America has arrived! “Hey terrorists!” they call out, “terrorize this!” They proceed to mow down everyone and everything in the park with missiles, machine guns, one-liners, and kung fu. The Eiffel Tower falls, shattering the Arc de Triomphe. A terrorist runs across the street into the Louvre, which is promptly destroyed by an American rocket. France is saved!
And so is this mad, mad year of politicized movies, which goes absolutely off its nut with “Team America,” a potty mouthed puppet show from the creators of “South Park” about the global war on terror. Ingeniously directed in mock-blockbuster style by Trey Parker, who co-writes with the irreverent Matt Stone, “Team America” follows the adventures of a crack(ed) group of freedom fighters as they defend the globe against the scheme of Kim Jong Il to inflict “9/11 times a thousand” – a plan otherwise known as “91,100.”
They also combat the bleeding-heart attention-grubbing of Alec Baldwin, Tim Robbins, Janeane Garofalo, and other members of the Famous Actors Guild – the F.A.G.s. “Team America” reserves most of its uproarious satire for Hollywood, and for that I salute it, even if it’s not quite the equal-opportunity catharsis I wished for. Somewhat improbably, this is not a movie that grabs the opportunity to joke about a puppet president, or poke fun at an attorney general with a penchant for crooning Red State ballads.
It does provide a gut-busting anthem for cowboy aggression – “America, F-Yeah!” – and relishes the irony of Team America annihilating entire cities in order to kill a handful of terrorists. Nevertheless, liberals exiting the preview screening I attended whinged about its rudeness, and even expressed fear – I kid you not – that it might sway votes to the dark side.
Here is, after all, a movie that features Michael Moore as a hot-dog clutching suicide bomber who detonates himself in a NORAD-like compound hidden inside Mount Rushmore; a movie that literally feeds Hans Blix to the sharks (via a trap-door in Kim Jong Il’s secret compound); a movie that delights in the act of flinging Susan Sarandon off a balcony to her death; and one that climaxes in an outrageously scatological defense of preemptive war.
But come on now, it’s not like undecided voters are going to be swayed by a movie in which dedication to one’s country must be proved by an act of gay sex. This is the sacrifice asked of Gary Johnston, an actor recruited by Team America to go deep undercover as an Islamic militant. Gary was discovered in the Broadway musical “Lease,” whose show-stopping number is called “Everyone Has AIDS” (chorus: “AIDS! AIDS! AIDS! AIDS! AIDS!”). After a high-tech operation that alters his infidel features – splotches of black felt glued to his cheeks, a terrycloth towel wrapped around his head – Gary accompanies the Team in a globe-stomping rampage of idiot imperialism.
All of which is set in the production design feat of the year, a splendid mini-world, complete with Times Square diorama, trees made out of money on Hollywood Blvd., masticating puppet camels in Cairo, and an outlandish evil-Oriental compound nestled amid the mountain crags of North Korea. It all must be seen to be believed – mind your step around the puddle of yellow puke – and I’m here to tell you to go see it. “Team America” punks on politics, slaps up Jihad, and falls to floor in a fit of giggles, rolling in its own mess – and ours.
***
In the African village where “Moolaade” takes place, a man called Mercenaire (Dominique Zeida) presides over a cheery open-air market. He piles his wares under the bright blue sky or hangs them from wire strung between broad, shady trees: multicolored robes and blue plastic shoes, stale baguettes and boxes of “Prudence” condoms, plastic bowls in Day-Glo hues and imported French batteries (which last longer than the local brand and are popular for listening to radio broadcasts of the Koran).A soldier turned entrepreneur, Mercenaire has a reputation for womanizing and some rather naughty ideas about the barter system.
Across the way, a multi-pronged termite hill rises up from the ochre ground. Many years ago, the first king of the village defied a ritual declaration of moolaade, or “Protection,” and was transformed by the gods into the earthwork. The villagers have respected it ever since as a totem of their tribe and a reminder not to mess with the moolaade. Nearby, they have erected a mosque in the same undulant shape, topping it off with a large ostrich egg secured at its uppermost point.
Dogs, goats, chicken, sheep, and beetles share this radiant hamlet with the villagers, who attire themselves in eye-popping robes and greet one another with elaborately formulaic salutations. “Moolaade” is about landscape and language, brightness and color, harmony and heroism. It is also, yes, a movie about resisting the practice of female circumcision.
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The toast of Cannes and a favorite of this year’s New York Film Festival, “Moolaade” transforms the grimmest of subjects into the gladdest of songs. If you’re thinking National Geographic meets NOW, think again. Writer-director Ousmane Sembene grounds politics in pleasure, didacticism in dazzling aesthetics. On paper, he has written a solid parable of African girl power; on celluloid, he makes agitprop pop.
As the story opens, four young girls seek refuge from the purification. They call on proud, progressive Colle (Fatoumata Coulibaly), who years ago refused to give up her own daughter to the salindana – crimson-robed priestesses of the mutilating rite. In a brazen act of defiance, Colle declares a moolaade over the children.
The moolaade can only be broken by the utterance of a word. A length of rope secured across Colle’s doorstep signals the perimeter of the protection. Like the village architecture and its codes of communication, the concept of the moolaade fascinates as something magically other, but the excitement of “Moolaade” only begins with exoticism. Mr. Sembene’s direction is a model of lucid storytelling, each shot squared to the next. His eye, blessed to cast itself on such a profusion of beauty, keeps things relaxed and uncluttered. Density of color in “Moolaade” impacts with sculptural heft.
Mr. Sembene does surprising things with music, playing tense confrontations in counterpoint with the most buoyant of instrumentals. But his great talent is for people – in selecting them (one assumes a largely non-professional cast), in celebrating their complexity, in directing them to deeply affecting performances all the more touching for a little roughness around the edge. Led by Ms. Coulibaly, aglow with superhuman integrity, his ensemble charm the devil out of you. Even the pig-headed reactionaries are full-blooded people – listen up, John Sayles – whose violence is motivated by fear (of modernity) and respect (of tradition) rather than the cheap, schematic indignation of the self-righteous polemicist.
Of all the ostensibly progressive cinema we’ve seen in this aggressively politicized year, “Moolaade” feels the healthiest, most productive, most humble, and most humane.