A filmmaker needs unbelievable tunnel vision to make a movie about problems in the education system of the planet’s most powerful country and then make another movie touting the theoretical value of going to school in a developing country.
For the record: Every person absolutely should have access to education. It’s a human rights travesty that the Taliban would demand that girls not go to school, among countless other revolting treatments of women in many places around the globe. Malala Yousafzai, the 18-year-old Pakistani activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year and rose to international attention after the Taliban shot her in the head because she spoke out about women deserving an education, absolutely deserves credit for her unbreakable spirit and work spreading an important message.
Yet “He Named Me Malala,” from director Davis Guggenheim (of the OK “Waiting for ‘Superman'” and wildly unworthy Oscar winner “An Inconvenient Truth”), doesn’t try to raise awareness for Malala’s issue, only for Malala. And not in any concrete way—even after seeing this less-than-90-minute round of applause of a documentary, you still don’t really know what Malala is doing and what impact her speeches and travels have had. You know that she’s been on “The Daily Show” and met Bono. But Guggenheim does nothing to reconcile the fact that the Taliban blows up hundreds of schools regardless of Malala’s spot on Time’s list of influential people. Perhaps the film’s most profound moment comes when young women are kidnapped in Nigeria and Malala, brought in to raise the international profile of this incident, asks, “What should I do? How can I help?” She does not say this openly and determinedly. She says this in disbelief, knowing she is a teenager who cannot do much in this situation.
This doc might have examined the pressure on Malala in her role as a teenage political figure or public perception of world leaders compared with how much people know about what is done and what is or isn’t changing. Instead, Guggenheim tacks on Pakistani detractors of Malala’s celebrity toward the end, uninterested in looking closely at turning a legitimately praiseworthy figure into an icon while a complex, violent problem rages on. His frequent use of animation and goofy input from Malala’s kid brother—switching from the boy saying he likes Roger Federer’s hair to Malala recalling her friend being shown a man’s decapitated head is a horrendous transition of legendary proportions—further undermines the serious, real subject matter. Malala expresses heartache for the many kids out of school in Syria, and of course that’s sad. But survival trumps education, and “He Named Me Malala” is too busy prepping the standing ovation to sit and think about how the world got to this place and what needs to be done to save lives, then minds.
1.5 stars (out of four)
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