Generally speaking, documentary plot lines are hard to spoil, but definitely not impossible to.
Great documentaries provide insight into the overlooked details of a subject, interwoven into a storyline that fits seamlessly with the cinematic format.
“He Named Me Malala” has none of these things. The only one it somewhat appears to have is a cinematic format, and on closer inspection, even that is visually stunted. What the film does have, and what made it a success at this year’s Telluride Film Festival, is Malala Yousafzai, who glows with youth and acuity so commandingly that she lifts the entire product to a blissfully amusing degree.
In October 2012, Yousafzai, who at the age of 15 was already a prominent peace activist featured in publications around the world, was shot in the side of her head while riding on a school bus. The Taliban, who heavily occupied her Pakistani home district of Swat, had threatened her for speaking out about the right of young girls to receive an education.
Yousafzai was taken to England, where she made a successful recovery. She continues to live there with her family, after the Taliban warned her that she would be shot if she ever returned to her homeland. In the years since, she has permeated the world as a beacon of hope and peace for women and children in developing nations.
Among countless accolades, she has notably become the youngest Nobel Prize laureate in history.
That note, her biggest achievement on a global scale, is barely touched upon in “He Named Me Malala” while the credits are already rolling. Among the most dramatic sequences in the documentary is one that replays the 2013 announcement of Nobel Peace Prize winners, of which Yousafzai was a nominee but lost until the following year. It’s a solemnly treated, entirely unnecessary part of a movie that otherwise handles solemnness pretty well.
There is no rigid storyline that “He Named Me Malala” attempts to trace, instead choosing to hop between Yousafzai’s present-day life and the moments of her childhood that meant something to her or her parents. During these quick exchanges between lighthearted family conversation and dark interpretations of Taliban-influenced distress, there’s nothing for the audience to do but sit back and emotionally stutter its way through.
Individually, each of those scenes is handled with satisfying care. Many of the stories that Yousafzai and her family tell to the camera are overlaid with elegant, wistful animation. It adds a dreamy, calming touch to the occasionally troubled events it recounts. Each interview is, for the most part, connected to Yousafzai’s personality and how certain people or moments may have influenced her activist views.
The tidbits on Yousafzai’s life are the most interesting things that “He Named Me Malala” has to offer. A large amount of the documentary is focused on Yousafzai speaking to schools, low-income families and dignitaries from around the globe which, while rousing the first couple times, lends nothing in-depth to the political conversation.
“He Named Me Malala” would do more justice to the woman and the tragedy that she went through by going deeper into the state of her former country and the stronghold the Taliban still has there. The reliance on the more family-friendly aspects of her life is produced well enough for a certain educational purpose, but leaves the account feeling unfinished.
At the very least, “He Named Me Malala” fulfills its titular purpose. Yousafzai’s father Ziauddin describes how his daughter was named after Malalai of Maiwand, an Afghan warrior who fought for the freedom of her people. Even further, though, the connections that Malala’s family makes towards their now-famous loved one are heartwarming, often funny narrations of what that name means to all of them.
The grim portions of Yousafzai’s story are what made her one of the most respectable icons of the millennium so far. But “He Named Me Malala” makes the point, in a moderately entertaining fashion, that Malala would rather the world hear the story of her family and her people.
– Sebastian Torrelio