20 MARCH 2024
List of Figures
INTRODUCTION
While poignant and passionate, the underlying tones of white saviorism in Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant (Ritchie, 2023) is undeniable. This saviour narrative at first seems to be subverted when it is the non-white character of Ahmed, saving Jake Gyllenhal’s Sergeant John Kinley. However, the second half of the film falls back into the lap of the same tired trope many white directors stumble into when writing non-white, oppressed characters (Ritchie, 2023). The valued, true “trauma is often only that form of trauma in which the dominant group can participate as a victim” (Brown, 1995, p. 102). But rather than this ignored trauma being the secret trauma of women (Brown, 1995), it is the trauma of the Middle Eastern Ahmed that is held in a lesser regard than the trauma of American soldier, Sergeant Kinley. The goal of this essay will be to investigate the traumas experienced by Ahmed through the lens of the whitesaviour industrial complex.
AN ANALYSIS OF AHMED
Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant is a 2023 war film by director Guy Ritchie, a departure from his usual film style involving quirky characters and a comedy-crime genre blend seen in films such as 2009’s Sherlock Holmes and 2000’s Snatch. Ritchie’s (2023) latest film follows the relationship between an Afghan interpreter and an American Master Sergeant as they evade the Taliban (see Figure 1). The film was widely well-received, though many critics shared
Screenshot from the 2023 film, “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant”
Note: Guy Ritchie (dir), 2023.
FIGURE
film, implying that by nature, this film is often viewed as both a genre-subversion and a typical war, white-saviourist film (Adlakha, 2023).
As Ahmed is not the protagonist of this film, his development in the second half of the film feels rather two-dimensional, yet he remains the film’s most compelling character. This is due to Dar Salim’s impassioned portrayal of Ahmed. Dar Salim’s standout performance is most exemplified by the sequence in which he treks through the desert, fleeing from the Taliban and dragging along an injured Kinley (see Figure 2).
Salim’s own trauma as an Iraqi refugee must play a role in his compassionate portrayal of Ahmed’s struggles (Guerrasio, 2023). The memory of a traumatic event is often as powerful in its impact as the experience of the event itself (Caruth, 1995) and therefore it cannot be too far fetched to assume Salim’s power in this role comes from his own memories surrounding his own traumas. Furthermore, Salim explains that by listening to the stories of others, real interpreters, he was able to learn how to portray Ahmed in the most true way possible (Davids, 2023). Salim uses his own trauma and the trauma passed over by others (Caruth, 1995) to let the audience into Ahmed’s experience in a way that feels painfully real.
“It is not only the moment of the event, but the passing out of it that is traumatic” (Caruth, 1995, p. 9), meaning that trauma generated memories are often an addition to pain of the event of the trauma. If trauma is carried by memory and therefore often alter perception of traumatic events (Caruth, 1995), then it is true that the second half of the film, where Gyllenhal’s inner turmoil is portrayed instead of Ahmed’s inner turmoil, steals some of the film’s overall impact because we do not explore the memories Ahmed possesses in connection to his trauma. We do not spend enough time with Ahmed to truly understand the effects of his trauma. I believe that the idea of white saviorism stealing from a full analysis of Ahmed’s trauma is
Screenshot from the 2023 film, “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant”
Note: Guy Ritchie (dir), 2023.
FIGURE
Screenshot from the 2023 film, “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant”
Note: Guy Ritchie (dir), 2023.
FIGURE
my sentiment of the appearance of the white saviour trope common in war films (Rotten Tomatoes, 2023).
In 2012, writer Teju Cole coined the term the “White-Saviour Industrial Complex’’. This combines the concepts of white saviorism, which may be defined (from a filmic perspective) as a “model white lead character [...] who takes on a mission to save people of colour from their plight” (Ash, 2015, p. 89), with the military-industrial complex, which refers to a “network of individuals and institutions [...attempting…] to marshal political support for continued or increased military spending” (Weber, 2023). Essentially, the white-saviour industrial complex refers to the ability of white individuals to ‘save’ oppressed individuals without a regard for solving the larger systems of oppression put in place by governments such as the US (Aronson, 2013).
This complex places the emotional catharsis of the white individual, which may financially benefit the systems that create oppression, above the needs of the oppressed. In Guy Ricthie’s The Covenant (Ritchie, 2023), the character of Ahmed fills the role of the traumatised oppressed providing emotional catharsis to Jake Gyllenhal’s character as Gyllenhal extracts him from Afghanistan.
The film (Ritchie, 2023) is fifty percent a subversion of the white saviour trope and fifty percent an example of the white saviour trope. This is suggestive of the film’s postmodern nature, in that it presents itself as more than one type of film, i.e. critical pluralism (Hassan, 1986). Ritchie (2023) had an intended meaning infused within the film yet different audiences may glean different interpretations of this film (Thomson-Jones, 2008). As per Hassan’s (1986) suggestion, postmodern media relies on the existence of critique, and thus a postmodern text such as Ritchie’s (2023) film naturally attracts critique. “Kinley and Ahmed are both men forged in anger and loss [...] However, the film’s overarching structure affords only Kinley a complete emotional exploration” (Adlakha, 2023). This critique is followed by praises of the
most exemplified in the scene (see Figure 3). where Gyllenhaal’s character discusses how he is haunted by Ahmed’s face and therefore must save him to save himself (Ritchie, 2023).
CONCLUSION
To conclude, I will state that I very much enjoyed the first half of Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant (Ritchie, 2023). Salim’s Ahmed is a wonderfully compelling character, and his experience of trauma was fascinating to watch. However, this trauma is not explored to its full extent within the second half of the film and the focus is on Gyllenhaal’s Kinley. White saviorism emerges in the form of the pedestal on which Kinley’s trauma is put, rather than a greater exploration of Ahmed’s trauma, his memory therefore of and its effects on him as a character.
REFERENCES
Adlakha, S. (2023, April 18). ‘The Covenant’ review: Guy Ritchie gets serious. Indiewire https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/movies/the-covenant-review-guy-ritchie-jakegyllenhaal-1234829009/
Ash, E. (2015). Racial discourse in “The Blind Side”: The economics and ideology behind the white saviour format. Studies in popular culture, 38(1), 85–103. http://www.jstor.org/ stable/44259586
Brown, L. S. (1995). Not outside the range: one feminist perspective on psychic trauma. In C. Caruth (Ed.) Trauma: explorations in memory (pp. 100-112) Johns Hopkins University Press.
Caruth, C. (1995). Introduction. In C. Caruth (Ed.) Trauma: explorations in memory (pp. 3-12) Johns Hopkins University Press.
Cole, T. (2012, March 21). The white-saviour industrial complex. The Atlantic. https://www. theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-white-savior-industrial-complex/254843/
Davids, B. (2023, April 18). How Danish star Dar Salim became the stoic, steady hand of ‘Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant’. The Hollywood Reporter. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ movies/movie-features/the-covenant-star-star-dar-salim-jake-gyllenhaal-1235391354/
Guerrasio, J. (2023, April 18). Jake Gyllenhaal and Dar Salim didn’t have to like each other to star in Guy Ritchie’s new movie — it just happened that way. The Business Insider. https://www. businessinsider.com/the-covenant-jake-gyllenhaal-dar-salim-interview-2023-4
Hughey, M. W. (2010). The white saviour film and reviewers’ reception. Symbolic interaction, 33(3), 475–496. https://doi.org/10.1525/si.2010.33.3.475
Ritchie, G. (Director). (2023, April). Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant [Film]. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Ritchie, G. (Director & Writer). (2000). Snatch [Film]. Columbia Pictures.
Ritchie, G. (Director). (2009). Sherlock Holmes [Film]. Warner Bros. Pictures.
Rotten Tomatoes. (2023). Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant - Movie reviews. Rotten Tomatoes. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/guy_ritchies_the_covenant/reviews
Thomson-Jones, K. (2008). The thinking viewer. In K. Thomson-Jones (Ed.) Aesthetics and film (pp. 97-112) Continuum.
Weber, R. N. (2023, December 21). Military-industrial complex. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/military-industrial-complex
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