"SIA: The Dream of the Python (2001)
Honor means different things in different languages and different cultures. For some, it could mean sacrificing their happiness. For others, it could mean sacrificing their lives. For Sia, it meant sacrificing her sanity, among other things.
In Sia: The Dream of the Python, a film by Dani Kouyate, the character the title invokes is the most beautiful virgin in the village. As such, she is the logical choice to serve as a sacrificial lamb. In order to bring back prosperity to their village, a group of priests who’s faces are never seen, and are always dressed in black hoods, recommend that a human offering be sent to the mystical snake god. They already look like reapers, and death does indeed follow these priests wherever they go. The emperor decrees that their proposal must be followed, and problems ensue. Sia flees, and takes refuge with the village madman, Kerfu. She doesn’t want to die. Kerfu asks her who does, and tells her that everyone must. Besides, as is spoken later in the film, whether you’re afraid or not, death must come to all men. The movie plays like a new brand of African existentialism. The distinct possibility of death hangs over this film like a specter. The possibility of death, or something worse.
What could be worse than death? A loss of honor? Lies? For Sia, it’s the loss of her purity. A loss that packs a double wallop, seeing as how the priests rape her. Religion does not equate to virtuosity in this film (as we’re painfully learning in everyday life). When the priests rape her, they don’t only violate her body. They violate her mind, her values. In turn, Sia is cast out of the village by her fiancé. He has taken over the emperorship in a moment of transition. A false coup d’etat. A lie. And his bride-to-be refuses to go along with it. The most important lesson this film teaches is that empires cannot be built upon deception. Not longstanding and honorable ones, at least.
Dani Kouyate
But the film also teaches us that nothing is always what it seems. There are two sides (or more) to every story. Is the world a dream, or a dream the world? It hardly matters for Sia. We last see her stumbling down a modern city street, dressed in tattered rags amid a rainstorm. She screams unintelligible warnings, something to the effect of you reap what you sow. Unfortunately, no one passing by pays her any attention. About as much attention as you would normally give a raving “lunatic” who walks past you muttering to him or herself. No happy endings for Sia. Her warnings go unheeded, and the price for her knowledge comes awfully high. She had to lose her family, her fiancé, her virginity, and her mind. Talk about sadistic cinema! She has her honor though. But the film’s final question is an obvious and disturbing one: was it worth it?
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