A somber account of everyday life in an African town under the rule of an Islamist militia, Timbuktu has a deceptively calm and quiet demeanor. The gunmen — who deliver seemingly silly commands about women wearing socks via a clumsy megaphone — seem like a mild annoyance at first. And then the stoning begins. For Westerners living with the specter of ISIS, this presents a very different, far more immediate experience of terror. Director Abderrahmane Sissako tries to present a comprehensive portrait of the city, even including personal moments with the soldiers to help us understand something of their motivations. It’s an ambitious strategy that’s occasionally too much for the movie to bear. A storyline involving a cattle-herding family that lives in the nearby dunes, for instance, never quite coalesced for me; I wish the movie had featured far more of them, or far less. And while some of the drama is overly telegraphed, Timbuktu does, on occasion, capture its characters’ struggles with wonderfully poetic imagery. After soccer has been banned, a group of men gather to play an imaginary game on a dusty field. They pause when armed men on a motorcycle arrive and switch to benign stretching exercises. Then, as the motorcycle drives away, they resume their game. Let freedom “ring.”
