Parky At the Pictures (2/10/2026)

(Reviews of Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie; and Kikuyu Land)

KNIFE: THE ATTEMPTED MURDER OF SALMAN RUSHDIE.

Prolific documentarist Alex Gibney has touched upon all sorts of topics, personalities, and controversies during his long career. In Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie, he draws on the Indian-born author's memoir and the recovery footage filmed by his wife to consider a brutal attack by Hadi Matar that took place on 12 August 2022 during a literary festival event in Chautauqua, New York. In a curious way, this intimate profile contains echoes of two films that Gibney made back to back over a decade ago, Taxi to the Dark Side (2007) and Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr Hunter S. Thompson (2008), which respectively centred on an Afghan cabby who had been subjected to pitiless torture and a provocative writer who had no qualms about expressing himself in his own distinctive manner.

Following a blurry-jerky reconstruction of the attack, Salman Rushdie narrates from Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, as he wonders why he didn't resist or run away. `When death comes very close to you,' he says, `the rest of the world goes far away and you can feel a great loneliness.' He describes the letters that had floated through his mind as he was presumably undergoing emergency surgery and how he had dreamt about the chess game in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957). Around Day 6, wife Rachel Eliza Griffiths started making a record of his recovery to help them both process the trauma. The images of his injuries are stark, particularly the close-up of the damaged right eye, through which he had half-noticed his assailant mount the stage to launch at him in a frenzied, 15 stab assault.

As he wakes one morning, he muses on the fallout from the publication of The Satanic Verses (1988) and a segment follows chronicling Rushdie's purpose for the book, the fatwa issued by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, and the furious protests by Muslims in Britain, Pakistan, and India. We see vox pops of young and old proclaiming it their duty to carry out the death sentence issued over a book neither the Supreme Leader nor many (if any) of the speakers would have read. As Rushdie was protected by Special Branch officers, his Japanese translator, Hitoshi Agarashi, was murdered and his Italian translator was stabbed. Yet it took 33 years for someone to reach Rushdie himself.

Encouraged by the rally held on the steps of the New York Public Library, Rushdie recalls how even Boris Johnson had posted good wishes online after he had opposed his knighthood and buffoonishly mocked his writing on an edition of Question Time. Such antipathy was nothing, however, compared to the abuse he had suffered at the hands of his alcoholic father prior to leaving Mumbai for Rugby in 1961. He endured racial prejudice at the school before taking to student life at King's College, Cambridge. Over the next two decades, Rushdie would become less of an outsider, as marriages came and went and he managed to reconcile with his father before his death. As he avers in the voiceover, `We would not be who we are today without the calamities of our yesterdays.'

Griffiths had forbidden her husband to look into a mirror before Day 9 and he calls over a clip from Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water (1962) how lucky he was that he had been attacked by a man who had no idea how to kill with a blade. He also recalls knife-related scenes from West Side Story (1961), 12 Angry Men (1957), and Psycho (1960), as well as references to weapons in Philip Pullman's The Sutble Knife (1997) and his own Shalimar the Clown (2005).

Thinking back to the fatwa period, Rushdie recalls being played by Afzaal Ahmad as a Jewish agent sent to kill Muslims in the Pakistani feature, International Guerrillas (1990), and how Yusuf Islam (the former Cat Stevens) had upheld the Ayotollah's verdict. He then ducks back a few years to recall being bored writing copy for Aero adverts and how he and wife Clarissa had embarked upon the year-long, subcontinental tour that had inspired Midnight's Children. But he ends this reflection by deciding to go on the freedom of speech offensive in order to ease his way back into the limelight and take the risks that came with public appearances.

On the night before the attack, Rushdie had photographed the Moon over the lake abutting his guest house. He had thought about his 2023 novel, Victory City, in which characters came to Earth from the lunar surface, as well as the Tex Avery cartoon, Billy Boy (1954), about a goat that ate the Moon, and Georges Méliès's A Trip to the Moon (1902), although he had no idea what would happen to his own right eye the next morning.

Having survived the pain of having his eye sewn shut, Rushdie began accepting the fact he would lost half his field of vision. Friend Wes Anderson calls to promise him a film festival when they next get together and Rushdie thanks him for the love and support that is keeping him going. But he could also recall his parents telling him, `What cannot be cured must be endured.' Soon, he is able to stand and walk a few steps and he expresses gratitude to the staff of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre Hamot in Erie, Pennsylvania for their expert care. He knows it's going to take a while getting used to his limitations, but he is determined to not let his assailant (`The A') win.

Reflecting on how he had tries to live a normal life after relocating to New York, Rushdie wonders whether he had not prioritised his security enough in putting on a brave face everywhere he went in order to help persuade others that his presence posed no threat. Had he, in fact, brought the attack upon himself?

After 18 days, he left hospital and drove to New York to begin rehab. Alone at night for the first time, he could listen to the street music and draw comfort from it, while also accepting that his life would have to change. He looked at himself in the mirror, with Paul McCartney's vocal being isolated from `I'm Looking Through You' on the soundtrack, to convey the ethereality of going through the looking glass, as he had done before on leaving India and having gone into hiding.

On Day 40, Rushdie returned home in the wee small hours and he enjoyed the feel of his own bed. Physio went well on his left hand and it was decided to leave his eye as it was, which was a relief after imagining the notorious eye-slicing scene from Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí's Un chien andalou (1928). He wrote about the attack, while getting into his new routine. But he needed to return to the scene of the crime to demonstrate that he had come out the other side and he did so on Day 401.

Having called at the prison in which The A is incarcerated, Rushdie taunts him that his life will continue after his violence and he felt happy enough to dance. As Griffiths hadn't been with him, Rushdie takes her to his lodgings with the lake view before we enter the auditorium, where he had been due to speak on keeping writers safe from harm. Shockingly, we now get to see real footage of the stabbing in all its frenzied fury, as Rushdie calmly talks through what he had experienced. Looking into the lens, he says, `I'm standing up in the place where I fell down.'

A closing caption reveals that Matar (who hadn't been born when the fatwa was issued) was sentenced to 25 years for attempted murder before we see inset footage of Rushdie on holiday in Jamaica, feeling lighter and restored. He's presented with a birthday cake and asks for a knife, as the film closes. It's a corny way to end a rather conventional portrait of the artist as a resilient man, but Gibney seems comfortable with the amount of sentiment that characterises Griffith's hospital record. Given the shock she and her husband had gone through, this is entirely understandable. But it often feels as though we are viewing footage that should have remained private, even though Rushdie clearly wanted everything he went through to be seen. His voiceover takes off some of the curse, as the dry wit affirms that he is back on something approaching an even keel and is able to give the hideous nightmare its rightful place in the sea of troubles that has often threatened to engulf him.

That it hasn't speaks volumes for Rushdie's character, which has mellowed since he first appeared on the scene with an assurance that could sometimes feel conceited. Even Boris Johnson might warm to him after watching this. It's been deftly put together by editor Andy Grieve, who excels at finding suitable archive snippets to illustrate Rushdie's recollections. But the words are more impactful than the images and Gibney overplays his hand with some of the movie clips (especially the ones relating to knives), although the scene from Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) makes sense, while the bit from Akira Kurosawa's High and Low (1963) shows imagination.

However, Gibney rightly shows Griffiths's harrowing close-ups of Rushdie's wounds and judges the timing of the 12 August footage to perfection, as the audience has come to terms with the outrage and been reassured that Rushdie is going to pull through physically and psychologically. Yet being in the room doesn't disconcert the author. Instead, it allows him to square the circle, become `a confident person again', and move on with the admirable attitude, `I'm 76 and I'm still going.' Long may he continue to do so.

KIKUYU LAND.

In 2020, UN special rapporteurs raised concerns about the British government's reluctance to address the issue of the forced eviction from Kenya's Rift Valley of the Kipsigis and Talai communities. Now, Andrew H. Brown and Bea Wangondu's Kikuyu Land turns the focus on to the peoples who were removed by imperial forces from the ancestral and spiritual homelands that were converted into tea plantations.

Following archive footage of Sir Evelyn Baring, the colonial governor of Kenya in the 1950s, promising a bright future for the Kikuyu peope, Nairobi-based journalist Bea Wangondu opines that when it comes to her community, there are usually two sides to every story, `one that the world sees and one that they keep to themselves'. She explains that land is identity among the Kikuyu, while reporting on the efforts of Mungai to get justice and action for his displaced people from the National Land Commission. He accuses the British of raping his homeland and stealing it to grow tea, while also claiming that the Kikuyu were cheated when land was redistributed following independence in 1963 and Wangondu is determined to find out who benefited from such an unfair process, especially as she is rebuffed when she approaches the various plantations still dominating the territory.

She meets with Mungai's son, Njenga, who runs `Better Tomorrow Today' to provide food for the families of the impoverished Kikuyu who are trying to eke out a living on their land because they want to be buried with their ancestors rather than move away and find better-paid jobs elsewhere. One of the kids is Stephen, who has a lively mind and reminds Wangondu of herself at his age. His mother is a tea picker and she works long hours under the scrutiny of field managers who not only drive them hard, but who also use intimidation and make sexual demands of the female workers. Speaking anonymously, several others back these claims in stating that field managers exploit their positions by threatening to have people fired or evicted if they don't co-operate.

Wangondu's family was able to acquire a larger plot than many of her neighbours in 1963 and she returns home to ask how this came about. She hears that her grandfather, Joseph Murage Nguriba, was a noble fellow who was respected by everyone. Intercut with her chats with her relatives is footage of William Ruto's bid for the Kenyan presidency in 2022, which includes him saying `enough is enough' when asked during a TV debate about his acquisition of land.

On meeting Jecinta, Wangondu learns about the abuse meted out by the field managers at the Mabroukie plantation, where she started work in 1968 after running away because her father had refused to let her go to school. This was owned by Brooke Bond before it became part of Unilever and Jecinta pulls no punches in describing the rapacious cruelty of the field managers, who were given carte blanche by their bosses. Revealing that she had three children, Jecinta avers that Unilever's empire was built on her back and she now feels free to speak out because they can no longer take her job to silence her.

Flying to London, Wangondu gets nowhere in seeking an interview with Unilever. But the National Archive yields documents disclosing that her grandfather had worked for the coloniser and she determines to discover what had motivated him to amass cheap plots to create his own fiefdom.

As King Charles visits Kenya to mark the 60th anniversary of independence, Wangondu meets Melanie Jacques of the Leigh Day law firm to discuss seeking justice for the women who were raped while working for British companies. She also laments her grandfather's willingness to profit from the cracks in the system.

Stephen doesn't tell his classmates that he walks to school from a farm and they never know whether he has eaten or not because it is easier to keep a secret if you are overlooked. Meanwhile, Wangondu continues her investigation as other journalists are being abducted for speaking out against the government. Shortly afterwards (as she is watching a Unilever promo saying how Lipton benefits its workers), she is ordered by the family to stop digging into her grandfather's activities and is asked to stay away for a while as she won't be welcome. Meanwhile, Mungai's case is delayed because the landowner claims not to have been kept abreast of developments. However, Ruto's determination to cover up his land acquisition jeopardises Commission hearings and he worries that he won't get justice.

Around this time, Wangondu has a clandestine meeting with an agent from the National Intelligence Service, who warns her that prying into land deals puts her at risk. He confesses to having made inconvenient critics disappear and confirms that the multinational corporations who control Kenyan agriculture put puppets into power so they can continue to exploit the country for their own ends. With Mungai still trying to press his case, Wangondu is granted an audience with her uncles, who tell her that their father was trying to do his best for the family and that's where his dealings must stay. She concludes that `white lies make better stories than black truths', over footage of police suppression of street protests against Ruto. In October 2025, he transferred the National Land Commission's valuation powers to the Ministry of Lands and Mungai is seen strumming his guitar, as he realises that the chance of his claim ever being heard and dealt with fairly have gone. A caption confirms that his claim was denied just two weeks later. Further notes state that the world's 50 biggest companies rely on 100 million `hidden workers', who are exploited for their labour and that Unilever sold its global tea interests for $5.1 billion in 2021. But the saddest part of the coda sees Stephen follow his mother into the fields rather than going to school, as he declares in voiceover that dreams only belong to small boys and that any chance of them coming true disappears when they come of age.

This sobering statement sums up the sense of injustice that permeates this worthwhile, if occasionally frustrating documentary. Co-directing with Brown (who is also credited for his camerawork and editing), Wangondu certainly raises a number of compelling issues, whether it's the legacy of colonial exploitation; the corrupt nature of Kenyan administration from the grassroots to the upper echelons; the sexual abuse of female field workers; the plight of those on the poverty line; or the callousness of corporate capitalism. Each topic would be worthy of an extended study in itself and therein lies the problem with a film that sometimes seems to dwell more on lauding Wangondu's crusading reporting style than it does on delving into the murkier depths of her family's part in the Kukuyu tragedy that was dictated by the Crown and has since been compounded by compatriots more intent on feathering their own nests by keeping onside with powerful multinational corporations than in alleviating suffering by rewarding honest labour with decent terms and conditions and a degree of hope for future generations.

More background insight into the Kikuyus's relationship with the land might have given the investigation sturdier roots, as Wangondu and Brown take for granted a general audience's knowledge of Kenyan history before, during, and after British rule. We learn nothing about the customs and rituals that have been violated by avaricious intruders and how this impacts upon the decisions taken by so many to remain in penury. It's noticeable that the tea pickers are mostly women, so what happened to the fathers of children like Stephen, as presumably not all of them would be field managers or security guards in the pay of the conglomerates? It's also not clear whose machines Mungai repairs and whether they belong to independent workers or corporate employees, as this would suggest an alternative to working in the fields (albeit a limited one).

Wangondu also steers clear of explaining how her uncles earn their money and how they treat their workers. Obviously, she finds herself in a tricky situation here, but she is rather coy about the source of her family's wealth and status and how it is being maintained. This isn't to overlook the courage and persistence she shows in pursuing such a contentious and potentially dangerous story. Nevertheless, the blur created by the laudable intention of covering as many bases as possible does tend to obscure the fact that the film-makers don't get very far in either uncovering unknown truths or in making their accusations stick against those who have betrayed the Kikuyu and other Kenyan communities over the last 130 years.