Incendies (Sunday, May 15, 2011) (31)

The French-Canadian film Incendies, adapted for the screen and directed by Denis Villeneuve from a play by by Wajdi Mouawad, is a very interesting exploration of a family's complicated history. The film opens with twins Jeanne (Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin) and Simon (Maxim Gaudette) sitting with the lawyer and friend of their mother Nawal (Lubna Azabel) in his Montreal office, after she has recently died. He tells them that her estate will be split between them equally, but that they have to search for their father (who they presumed was dead) and brother (who they didn't know existed) in her native Middle-Eastern country. It seems their mother had an eventful life before she immigrated to Canada, a life that included a lost son.

At first they are dumbstruck that their mother kept these people from them, then they are angry that she was "making things difficult from beyond the grave". She was probably not a wonderfully loving mother to them, and hunting for their family members is the last things they want to do.

Jeanne sets out first to find the brother, going to the mother's remote village (in a country that is given no name on purpose, but is something very much like Lebanon) to get information from anyone who might remember her. She finds that her mother was an outcast who has no friends left where she came from. As the story unfolds to the twins and to us, we realize that their mother was a political activist who left a trail of pain behind her.

The structure of the film is very complex and not-totally linear, making it sometimes difficult to establish place and time as we move from one chapter to another. We see Jeanne flash back to a moment just before her mother's death where she was suddenly and literally dumbstruck at a public pool, we then jump to the mother's life back when she was in her twenties and fighting for a rightist Christian agenda in the largely Muslim country (see: Lebanon). This disorientation is important for us to understand how head-spinning these revelations are for the twins. Sometimes the story they are discovering is so strange and unexpected that even they can't believe it.

Still, there is a tension and a sense that we never quite know exactly what we should be knowing but that we are very close, the comprehension equivalent of having a word on the "tip of your tongue". Many of the stories we see or hear are so elliptical and subjective that we never get enough space to figure out a full meaning. I think this is an effective device, but it is a bit showy and overdone at times I really would rather there was a more standard sequence of scenes.

Technically Villeneuve does a beautiful job with the look of the film and the framing of the shots. He uses a lot of hand-held cameras and near-point-of-view shots putting us relatively in the subjective position of the characters (mostly Nawal and Jeanne). He brilliantly uses the frame to conceal parts of bigger images and give us a very interesting selective view of things. This approach is used brilliantly in the climactic moment when the identities of the father and son are revealed. In many ways this style is all used to foreshadow that one shot - a very literary technique used beautifully in the visual here (how nice!).

The penultimate scene of the film ties the story up elegantly, but Villeneuve, unfortunately uses an epilogue that is totally unnecessary and very annoying. After we've just come to the end of a very complicated story, the epilogue has one character reading a letter explaining exactly what we have just seen. It's as if Villeneuve goes from thinking we are the smartest audience in the world to the dumbest in a matter of minutes. Aside from being intellectually frustrating, the epilogue is banal, leaving a very common, simplistic idea in our heads.

I feel like this is a very good movie, but has a bunch of problems that should have been washed out over drafts and re-writes of the script, not to mention stage-productions. This is a beautiful, emotional roller coaster of a story that gets us deeply into this family, but some of its formal qualities are too distancing. I think Villeneuve sometimes tries too hard to impress us rather than just telling a good story.

Stars: 3 of 4

Four Lions (Saturday, November 6, 2010) (146)

Four Lions is a movie that shouldn't be funny because of the subject matter, but is actually hilarious and might be the best comedy of the year. The story is about a group of four radical Muslim guys in Northern England who want to get involved in the greater jihadi movement. The only problem is that they're totally the gang that couldn't shoot straight. At one point when they go to Pakistan to train with some Al Qaeda outfit there, they are the bottom of their class and basically sent back home. The finale involves a very funny scene with the guys running a marathon in silly costumes... strapped with explosives inside.

As they deal with their fight for meaning in their lives, they also enjoy all the trappings of the West, like football (soccer), women, speaking English and not Arabic or Urdu and living in a cushy Western country. Omar, their de facto leader, is a totally nice and wonderful guy who works as a security surveillance guard for a department store. His friends at work are white and typically blue-collar English people. He's loved by all and keeps his mouth shut about his anti-western feelings.

I love the silliness of the film and the frankness with which it deals with this issue. Maybe some would find it disrespectful, but I love that sometimes we can laugh at jihad (oy vey). Not every terrorist is a genius, probably. I'd bet some are just fools who screw everything up they touch (can you say Richard Reid, the shoe bomber or Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the underwear bomber...?!). And that's the point. It was sorta funny that a guy tried to blow up a plane with explosives in his crotch - but can't get the explosion to go off. Sure it's tragic and scary and terrible, but seen from the other side of the same coin, it's really silly and funny.

I particularly like how unflinching and straightforward the film is. The bumbling group of idiots is at times racist, anti-Semitic, rude and violent, but they're treated as very matter-of-fact. Just when you think director Christopher Morris and co-writers Jesse Armstrong, Sam Bain and Simon Blackwell are going to flinch and pull up short of the big pay-off, they don't. Well done to them for sticking with the joke to the very end!

Stars: 3 of 4

The Oath (Sunday, October 24, 2010) (141)

The Oath is a very powerful documentary made by filmmaker Laura Poitras for the PBS series P.O.V. (and later released in theaters). This is the second installment in what is supposed to be a three-part series of life in the Middle East and America in the so-called "post-9/11" world. This is the follow-up to her brilliant documentary in 2006 called My Country, My Country, about the first post-Saddam election in Iraq.

This film is formed around two parallel stories of two men who were once very closely linked in terrorism, but now are less so. Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni man, was arrested in Afghanistan during the initial American invasion there in 2001. He has become known as "Osama bin Laden's driver" and was brought up on charges of providing material support for terrorism. (Ultimately he became better known for challenging the terms of his imprisonment and trial. The U.S. Supreme Court found in his favor, which led to a more standard military court marshal trial.) We see his legal team of American military officers fighting in his favor and speaking to the press at his trial in Guantanamo Bay.

Separately, we see Nasser al-Bahri (a.k.a. Abu Jandal) who was at one point Osama bin Laden's bodyguard. Also a Yemeni, he was involved in Al Qaeda in the late 1990s and was arrested in Yemen in 2000 in connection to the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. He was ultimately released in 2002 after it was clear he was not directly involved in that action, however during his time in detention, he was instrumental in giving interrogators information on the architecture of Al Qaeda and locations for their bases in Afghanistan. Most of the film is spent with al-Bahri in his home in Sanaa, Yemen as he teaches a new generation of young men about his views of Islam and Jihad.

Al-Bahri still deeply believes in the Jihadi struggle against the West and is still a general supporter of Al Qaeda and its actions around the world, but does not feel good about the tremendous loss of human life its attacks have created. He is very torn on this issue. He talks very frankly about how bad he feels when innocents die, but he knows it is for a bigger purpose. He says that he won't be able to stop all the violence and that it's coming regardless of what he does and says. He advocates that people read and study more than fight, but that he'll be ready to fight when the battle gets to his doorstep.

Much of what he talks about also relates to the oath he gave to bin Laden that he would be a soldier in his Jihad. Many in the jihadi world and in Al Qaeda see him as an apostate and a scoundrel because they believe he has backtracked on his oath, which in fundamentalist Islam is an offense punishable by death. He struggles with his because he is also a fundamentalist and he knows what he has done. He talks in circles about how he didn't so much play with the West against Al Qaeda because he doesn't believe he should be forced to kill people. He is clearly a very reluctant soldier, and his humanity comes through strongly as worries about death and damnation.

What is fascinating, of course is how the two stories are shown next to one another. The two men (who are brothers-in-law through al-Bahri's sister, by the way) were on the same path at one point (I believe al-Bahri got Hamdan into Al Qaeda) rising up the power ladder of Al Qaeda together. Then al-Bahri slipped and changed direction leaving his comrade on the field of battle. What is even sadder is that Hamdan was at most a driver, a rather low-level worker in the greater Al Qaeda machine, while al-Bahri is out as a free man - and he's talking about continuing with jihad. In basic terms, the man who couldn't stand the heat of battle and quit is now the free man paying less for his actions than his more devoted brother-in-law.

Poitras is an absolutely brilliant editor and director when it comes to creating powerful juxtapositions. She shines in transition, particularly with the beautiful landscape shots of Sanaa and Gitmo. She'll follow an important statement by al-Bahri or Hamdan's lawyers with a beautifully colored sky, say, that helps to seal the meaning of what was just said. It is because of beautiful transitions like this that this is not really just a political/historical/current events documentary. This is a really gorgeous film to watch.

I also love the juxtaposition we see between al-Bahri's constant questioning of his faith and his actions and the Pentagon's sureness of itself with regard to the fairness of holding Hamdan for seven years without a trial and the honesty of the trial itself. These two parts are beautifully cut back and forth to show how the former is a constant struggle, while the latter is barely examined and totally a done deal.

There is also a very sensible, easy-to-follow story structure to this work, that is not only reminiscent of a good newspaper article, but also a powerful narrative drama. Poitras lays out all the information we need very carefully and slowly so we can get a grip on who each person is and how he relates to others and to the bigger story. I don't believe she is really giving us a specific view one way or the other about how to think of these men. We don't come out thinking that one man was screwed, say, and one man was guilty. It's much more gray here, so we see how al-Bahri has some good and powerful points about jihad and Al Qaeda and he's neither a villain nor a hero. He's just a man, full of fear and doubt.

At one point, when talking to his students, al-Bhari says about Americans, "They can't live without planes, girlfriends, pizza, macaroni. A jihadist can live on stale bread." This is a very important point, very well said and a clear definition of the Jihahi's view of the world. It is made even more powerful when Poitras shows him taking a swig of a Coke bottle moments after he finishes speaking.

(One interesting note, is that al-Bahri says that the United 93 plane that crashed in Pennsylvania was actually intended for the White House rather than the U.S. Capitol building. I had never heard this before, but it is interesting.)

Al-Bahri is not a robot. He is a man with normal human emotions. This is important, I think, in an age when politics and international media have settled on treating terrorists as mindless drones doing the bidding of higher-ups. We see here that sometimes these pawns are actually fully-formed humans who share the feelings we all would. Blind faith is so challenging and even in the situation of jihad, it is not a binary black or white dilemma.

Poitras presents for us here a magnificent balance of two men who took divergent paths and had different faiths. One is in a jail cell in Gitmo serving his time (he was ultimately released in 2009) and the other is sitting in his living room in Sanaa talking to students... and to a filmmaker. They are both men of deep faith and belief, but are very different. It is very interesting that Hamdan is never on screen here, but his story comes across just as powerfully, through his lawyers and his back story.There are lots of elegant parallels and intersections in this film. It is well worth watching.

Stars: 3.5 of 4