Monday 29 March 2010

Joe Scott's take on ....West Beyrouth (À l'abri les enfants)


FACT is one of those places that I really can’t speak highly enough of - something to be celebrated , supported as much as possible & applauded for its determination to remain independent , unique and a defiant alternative to the generally repellent looking line-up at the Odeon. It is also somewhere i virtually never go.
If someone told me it was going to be closed down as part of a Movie Watching Standardisation Drive i would be appalled, but also feel very guilty & partly responsible for its demise through my lack of custom – similar to what’s happened with Six Music recently. “Ah, that’s terrible” I thought “......I really should have listened to it at some point in its eight year life-span”. Part of the reason for reticence to get involved in both is partly a nagging feeling that both I am seemingly so perfectly their target demographic that i subconsciously don’t want to give it to them too easily. This could be seen as admirably stubborn determination to avoid pigeon-holing and as doing my bit against the frightful, ever-creeping tentacles of marketing think-tank sorted and categorised people ...or could quite easily be viewed as petty, contrary tittery.
Either way, it’s too late for Six Music now – even if it wobbles through this problem it will be forever tainted by being ‘backed’ in its hour of need by a shockingly craven act of backsliding by the Tory MP voted Most Likely To Moonlight As A David Cameron Look-A-Like for Some Shabby Wool ‘Make Your Party Unique!’ Toting Outfit Based In Hereford , Ed Vaizey

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/mar/01/ed-vaizey-bbc-6-music

And for obvious reasons any support for the ailing songs-i-already-own-but-now-interspersed-with-George-Lamb-conducting-a-‘fun’-phone-poll-between-each-one provider would be to tacitly align myself with a man who claimed expenses to pay the bill for “extensive furniture range includes painted, rattan, bamboo, sofas, beds, tables, chairs and armoires” purchased, sweetly enough, from an exclusive shop owned by Cameron’s mother-in-law (“that was a year ago! That’s not topical anymore! Forget about all that! We (probably) paid that all back anyway!!”).

Not that there is any suggestion that FACT is set to be arbitrarily closed, but it would be horrible to be put in that same position –so to pre-empt the possibility I have decided to try & go to anything that vaguely catches my fancy. First beneficiary of this was West Beyruth, the inaugural film of the My War run ( ‘12 March - 30 May, 2010: A radically personal look at conflict in the digital age’) . This is an Arabic/French language film , directed in 1998 by Ziad Doueiri , covering the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975. It is not an area I had any knowledge or particular interest in beforehand but it was so brilliantly shot whilst hitting a perfect balance between black humour & genuine despair , irreverence & politicised fanaticism , fear of destruction & blithely carrying on with life despite the tumult going on all around , that it has probably instantly jumped into my all-time-top-ten.
There is barely a wasted scene across the two hours – with even the most trivial seeming parts carrying multiple subtexts .

The section played out in the bread-shop, where all the characters are shown to have been altered, corrupted and embittered to a horrible degree by the conflict & division pouring through the city is especially strong – two people who the main player Tarek has admired, respected & befriended in the past, flailing about in the dirt & flour in a scuffle guaranteed from the outset to achieve absolutely nothing is a fairly thorough microcosm of the entire backdrop. The confusion, Chinese-whispering and flux all over when the battles first break out is brilliantly relayed and subtly done , but the historical aspect was out-done i thought by the real killer feature which was the friendship that was played out by the two semi-narrators of the film , Tarek & Omar.

These two are schoolkids who relay events partly through home-video footage they make which veers from taking part in a rally protesting against a war victim death, to voyeurism of their uncle’s new girlfriend (“a right bit of lamb!”), to flares being set-off & bombs exploding back to buying candyfloss and arguing over a girl then culminating both sides in sneaking to a brothel by crossing an under-fire no-mans-land waving a bra as their only defence. Pure friendship - especially between slightly quirky, odd-couple characters – seems to be very rarely portrayed well but their camaraderie , arguments, ability to wind each other up & support for each other despite repeatedly letting each other down is absolutely on the money & utterly believable.
Amazingly, neither of them seem (according to imdb anyway) to have done anything since this and both stumbled into the parts (Rami Doueiri as Tarek is the younger brother of the Director & Mohammad Chamas as Omar was an orphan who turned up on set and caught everyone’s attention) . There must be some argument that the approach of being neither proper, fully-trained actors helped them play the roles so naturally but it doesn’t really matter – they’re both just brilliant.
All the other caharcters (Tarek’s parents, May, the girl who they both become friends with, the brothel owner , the school-teacher etc) are all played really well too & all have individual scenes which add to the movie as a whole & impact & influence the key players (Tarek’s mum going from a respectable, high flying lawyer to unemployed, degraded & obsessed with moving away) but is is these two who make the film outstanding and who you’re waiting to re-appear whenever tey’re off screen for any length of time.


If you are involved or an interested party in the basis for the film (as with the guy who did a short introduction in FACT, explaining why this was an important film for him and gave his reflections on escaping the conflict & watching the film as a kid & finding it funny without grasping the context – luckily this was only slightly undermined by a glitch in the sound-system which meant that this was incongruously sound-tracked by ‘Big Love’ by Fleetwood Mac. Tune, yes, but there’s a time & a place.....) then its not for me to say whether it works as a reconstruction of events or moods, but as a completely disconnected & blissfully ignorant viewer it 100% works on a enjoyable & credible level.

There’s no point going over every aspect of the film, technique used or recounting a lot of scenes (they’re virtually all brilliant) I cannot rate this film highly enough & would urge anyone to watch it if you get chance – as it will be too late to do anything with a clear conscience by the point you see a saddeningly reactionary Conservative-supported Facebook campaign calling for the reel of West Beyruth to be saved......

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