Sous les bombes

Under the Bombs (2007)

I can picture this being required viewing for anyone wanting a view of the kind of back and forth fighting between Israel and its many unfriendly neighbors. The devastation from superior Israeli firepower is horrifying. And you can see better the anger that ordinary Lebanese citizens--Muslim and Christian both--have toward the apparently insensitive Israelis.

The way this is unfolded is a convergence of two kinds of victims of the violence--a mother looking for her child and a taxi driver who she hires to take her around. In the searching we see all of Southern Lebanon's worst destruction--the real thing, shot on site--and we feel the frustration and hatred in all the people at the situation. We also see that it comes down to coping, as well, with a sense of resignation, that it's all out of their reach, even if the bombs reach them all too easily.

So, you'll cry and be in ruins yourself if you let yourself be absorbed. There is eventually going to be a sense that the movie plays the same chords for too long. The search keeps taking new turns, but the rubble, the anger, and sorry, the frustration, and even the relationship between the leads stays relatively the same. It's only in this last respect--a highly unlikely meeting of minds and hearts between to very different classes of people--that there is some evolution.

And the search, of course, has a kind of resolution that is sudden and a bit surprising. There are moments of movie drama along the way (the car stalls at the worst possible time, of course, and that kind of thing), but mostly it's about being transported to this very real war torn place using modern cinematography. The acting is intensely strong, and the basic story line heart wrenching.

Yes, see it, for those aspects that are overwhelming and necessary to understand as much as possible.

"You do not want war! I don't want war! All we want is to live! Is it too much to ask? " Lebanon has seen many wars since last half of century. 1948, 1958, 1968, 1975, 1982, 1984, 1989, 1996, 2006, 2007, 2011 till 2017. This film was shot during the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah (a Lebanese Shia Islamic Party). Israel launched a massive assault in response to killing of 2 Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah. It fired thousands of rockets targeting the residential areas of the southern Lebanon city that killed more than a thousand civilians. The attacks from both the sides went on for 33 days. This is a story about a Lebanese mother and her quest to find her son who was believed to have been rescued after the building he was in was bombed. This movie is not about script writing, cinematography, direction or even acting. It is distinctive and unparalleled in making of it. It was filmed in the war zone towards the tail end of the actual war when smoke was still rising from the debris of the buildings and the smell of gunpowder was still in air . Shot completely in Lebanon, it is raw, poignant and chilling. It was Lebanon's 2009 academy award submission .A good watch.

This is a really good film. And due to the fact that it was shot during the actual crisis gives it a documentary feel. Complimented with that is the superb acting of the lead characters. It's like real life unfolding on screen - the rampant destruction, needless pains & senseless atrocities of the war. The rustic music also suits the storyline perfectly.

A couple sequences though didn't quite fit into the flow of the story: - the sex scene seemed unnecessary and the breaking down of the car at the very end seemed like a little forced upon melodrama.

Would recommend this movie to anyone who is in a mood to find out how the Middle East politico-religious crisis affects a common citizen.

What better way to shoot the movie than amidst the rubble and destruction resulting from the the 2006 Lebanon War. How's this for realism in movies?

Zeina (Nada Abou Farhat) captures the raw emotions of grief and despair of possibly losing a young son in the war, as she races against time to locate him. This desperation moves Tony (George Khabbaz) to be more helpful to her. George Khabbaz succeeeds in showing the viewer his change of heart.

Great shots of the Lebanese countryside specially those places untouched by the air strikes.

The viewer is tempted to brush up on what provoked the war. Will this happen again to a land that has known armed conflict for so long?

Enjoyable movie. Acting is solid. Mix of real life footage it was hard to tell what was staged and what was real. Really makes you wonder why civilised human societies still insist on bombing each other to the stone ages.