Lesotho: This Is Not A Burial, It's A Resurrection (2019)
You can never underestimate the importance of a title. There are whole teams in Hollywood who work with focus groups just to make sure that the title of the next blockbuster works. Or resonates, as they’re more likely to say. Vibes, probably. They’re titlemaxxing, basically.
This Is Not A Burial, It’s A Resurrection is a daunting title. It suggests seriousness, literacy and importance. That it’s a Criterion release reinforces that perception, because Criterion tend not to release frivolous films. (Okay, they did do The Rock, but it’s not their usual output.) I found that I didn’t want to watch this.
I know nothing about Lesotho (I think it’s somewhere near Botswana, but I could be completely wrong), and the title really put me off. It made the film sound worthy, significant and dull.
After three failed attempts (each time I thought of something better to do at the last minute, mainly because I didn’t feel like I was in the right mood for something so clearly serious) I finally caved in and thought that I should just watch the film, and that my preconceptions would turn out to be misplaced.
And do you know what? They weren’t in the slightest. This was as incredibly tedious as I expected it to be, as over-long, as portentous and as turgid.
And that’s fine. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I wasn’t failing to meet the film on its own level, I wasn’t ignorant: I just didn’t like it.
We can’t all like everything. If we did, we ‘d never dislike anything either, or love anything. It would all be just…okay. And sometimes just okay is okay, but not all the time. And most certainly not here.
This Is Not A Burial has a relatable story (village is going to be flooded to allow for a new dam; one resident is very unhappy), has much to say about the clash between tradition and progress, technology and nature, national and local politics. It has some outstanding cinematography and striking visuals, and in Mary Twala it has a leading actress who holds one’s attention throughout in a performance which is nothing less than remarkable. (While watching I became convinced that this was an entirely true story and that they had found the real person it was about to play the part; that’s how natural Twala was. She didn’t seem to be acting at all but completely living the role.) But despite having all those things, it did absolutely nothing for me and I was bored. The framing device of some kind of jazz-playing beat poet in a nightclub narrating the story irritated me too, because I wasn’t sure how or why it connected to the main plot, or why it was necessary.
But that’s me. I can understand why some people would like this – why it would vibe with some. But it wasn’t for me.
Disc: DVD (Region 1, USA)
Source: eBay
Availability: Still widely available; Region 2 editions also exist