MovieChat Forums > Moolaadé (2005) Discussion > What happened to Mercenaire (Spoilers)

What happened to Mercenaire (Spoilers)

posted 16 years ago by tonirobinson
4 replies | jump to latest

It seemed the murder of Mercenaire was carried out in a cavalier manner. I know the elders said "Make sure he doesn't get out alive" but I thought that might have just been bluster. The scene of the men following him out of town made me think it was basically "running him out of town". But then when it was announced in the village so matter of factly, it shocked me. So Mercenaire knew he was going to his death. Can anyone comment if they know that the Sengalese culture would sanction such a murder? That there are no repercussions for their actions? I presume the government/law enforcement doesn't officially sanction such a thing, yet turns a blind eye. His only crime was to stop the beating of a woman, thus humiliating the husband. The reaction of the village to his murder was kind of fleeting... they were mildly shocked, yet not surprised and then they just moved on.

[–] lady_deirdre 16 years ago

Part of that may have been because he was an outsider. Who was going to complain about his death? He had no relatives in the village, and people might even have been happy to get rid of the man almost everyone had debts with.

It seemed to me that in this village, the old men making the decisions were the government/law enforcement. Random "justice" instead of an actual, objective law is a bad and dangerous thing, and this murder - though perpetrated offscreen - illustrates that in all its ugliness.

[–] bing148 14 years ago

Those men were the law in this village.

My only question is why he tried to bring all of his stuff with him. Greed was his undoing. If he'd just unhooked the bike and taken off, he'd have been able to get away most likely. Carry only your cash, he'd not have been broke.

[–] TemporaryOne-1 14 years ago

Greed wasn't his undoing, and I didn't perceive him as greedy. He allowed nearly every villager to keep whatever they wanted without payment, which forced him to overprice everything in order to try to earn back his losses from the few people with money.

The bloodlust of the male villagers was his undoing. They failed to honour their decision to expel him. Their anger towards him transcended beyond his intervention on Collé's behalf. It existed before the lashing, and exploded afterwards. Their anger seethed and broiled into bloodrage because they knew they were wrong and he was right, and because his presence represented a direct threat (progress, Westernism, modernity) to not only their culture, but their power.

Gathered all together in one large pulsating, seething group, the intention to chaunt him out of the village transformed into a death knoll. They would have murdered him right on the spot if they saw he disconnected the wares from his bike to make the flight quicker. All he did was prolong his death for a few extra minutes.

[–] 14 years ago

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