When big bad Hollywood starts complaining about what Netflix is doing to the movie industry, Atlantics is one of the perfect films to use in the streaming service’s defense. By giving Mati Diop a platform that studio execs wouldn’t give her in a million years, Netflix proves again why people love their service: by telling completely refreshing original stories from all over the planet and letting creators create. Keep finding talent Netflix, even if you have to go all the way to Dakar to do it.
Apparently Dakar wants to join the world of the future by building a gigantic skyscraper…by not paying Soulieman (Ibrahima Traoré) and all his coworkers for months. Desperate for a better life, Soulieman and a few others get on a boat for Europe. This devastates Ada (Mame Bineta Sane), who loves Soulieman but is betrothed to Omar (Babacar Sylla) a man she thinks she can never love. After a week with no word, Ada is forced to go to a party with Omar, assuming Soulieman gone. During the party, someone attempts arson on Omar’s house, and Ada is shocked to learn from the lead investigator Issa (Amadou Mbow) that Soulieman is the lead suspect.
I won’t go too deep into Atlantic’s story, but the screenplay goes in eerie and unexpected directions after this set up, like Personal Shopper meets It Follows. Diop eases us in, giving us a long look at a day in the life of normal Dakarians as they work hard and fight for simple things like the right to love and live; we go on a long car ride from the rich neighborhood to the poorer one, establishing the extensive economic gap Soulieman and Ada have to overcome for them to actually live their life in love together. We also see that everyone in Dakar truly comes alive in the night, away from the systems in place that prevent their freedom of expression. When the bizarre starts to unfold, we see Ada most inspired by the events. Even though Soulieman is involved a lot in the early, this is Ada’s story, changing from a young woman overcome by her situation to a fierce independent person who knows who she is. There’s lots of looking into mirrors that reveal true selves, so what Ada sees at the end is a lovely reflection of how far she’s come since a few days before the strangeness.
The eerie events that start happening also help reinforce the other themes of Atlantics. Besides knowing oneself, there’s something immediately satisfying in seeing what characters transform into. The movie picks deeply unpowerful people to give agency to, which is so unexpected for those in power that they start to feel some of the powerlessness everyone else feels daily. There’s also a beautiful symmetry to someone’s undoing leading to the opposite elemental undoing of someone else, as Isaac Newton would say, an equal and opposite reaction. Day and night. Skyscraper and slum. The have/have not diametric symmetry is everpresent. Atlantics feels like a fable told generation to generation in that region of the world. A story of sadness yes, but also a story of hoping against hope for something amazing to happen in spite of your circumstances.
Forgive my vagueness, but I’m looking out for you. The less you know about where Atlantics goes, the better the movie experience will be for you. I don’t know where you found Mati Diop Netflix, but keep finding people like her, because stories as fresh as Atlantics don’t just build themselves for nothing.