Sob o Céu do Líbano

Lebanese cinema has no major work that could find a place in world cinema--this film is arguably the first to make a name for the fledgling cinema. It won a jury prize at the Venice Film festival in 2003. I caught up with this film at the recent Dubai Film Festival.

The fourth or fifth feature film of Randa Chahal Sabag zeroes in on the Druze community, living on both sides of the Lebanon-Israel border. The community identifies itself with Muslims but adapts with the Jews, and even enrolls in the Israeli army. And the Druze are thinkers. While the film is not about the political situation, political tension provides the backdrop of a love story of certain young individuals.

The love story involves three principal characters: a young teenager on the Lebanese side who has recently attained puberty and has to be married by the family diktat to a distant relation on the Israeli side; her fiancé who is a decent, educated, sensitive man who is forced to accept the marriage; and a young Druze militiaman who watches bride cross the international boundary to get married. The militiaman falls in love as he records the process of the marriage and movements of the bride back and forth across the border. The bride seem to respond in spirit; yet she is defiant and honest in not accepting the forced relationship with her husband.

As Randa Sabag the director, is a woman, the main character of the young female teenager is pivotal to the film. She is so young and unafraid of being shot as she ventures to retrieve a kite on the other side of the border. Is she immature in her actions? She cares for her younger sibling more than herself. This action is interpreted as heroism by the community. Much later the same woman, fondles a dead foetus, just as a kid would play with a doll. It is not strange that later in the film she is antagonistic to her husband and reveals that she loves someone else--more out of childishness than out of maturity. The stoic yet beautiful face of Flavia Bechara as the young woman is fascinating as you wonder if there is indeed some maturity in the character that she is playing.

All the three characters come through as likable, positive, honest individuals--not heroes but young sensitive people. Quite in contrast, the older characters are confused, stupid, deaf, lecherous, and impotent.

At a level beyond the love story--that ends in a stylized dream crossing at the borders--Sabag seems to suggest that the youth will tear down the physical borders set up by older forces. For Arab cinema, this is an above average work from the region, both in quality (direction, acting and camera-work) and subject (screenplay), but it unfortunately is not great cinema by any stretch of imagination. One of its major drawbacks is the constant reversal to songs that do not serve as a distinct punctuation or prop of the story, especially when the film is not a musical.

Flavia Bechara is a 15 year old woman who, her mother explains via loudspeaker to her cousin across the Lebanese-Israeli border, has been menstruating for two years. She should be married, but there's no one to marry her to. So eventually she gives Flavia to Maher Bsaibes. When Bsaibes treats her, in her words, like a toy, she withholds herself from him. This is considered shameful on her part.

There are some amusing scenes, like the one I describe above, and the performances seem to be good, but the script cannot be considered subtle on anyone's terms. Well, sometimes subtlety and subtext aren't appropriate. Even so, I think I might have enjoyed this more, had there been more nuance.

Bizarre, humorous, touching and again - bizarre! A girl is married by her family to the cousin just across the border. Everything is done by the rules and custom! ...as far as possible when the aunts have to shout across the no-man's land with megaphones! ...The future husband is extolled, the virtues of the prospective bride are enumerated, ...the soldiers manning the watchtowers are blushing.

However, Lamia is a very strong girl with a bit of a mind of her own.

While walking the dirt-track from the Lebanese to the Israeli checkpoint in a white wedding dress, she does not cry. In patriarchal societies the bride is given up to her new family for good (And allow me to stress here, not "Muslim" but "Patriarchal" society, for these customs did not differ much in many lands of Christian Europe at the time when people still extracted their bite of bread with year-long toil over the unforgiving earth). Thus, countless brides cried upon leaving their father's doorstep. So much so that mourning for the forsaken family has become a formal and important part of the wedding ritual (or "hadn't her family loved and cared well enough for her??" the neighbours will gossip!)

Lamia refuses to cry, leaving not only family but an injured yet proud fatherland behind the barbed wires. From now on she refuses to do many more things expected from her - by her relatives or by us! ...Because the white kite is still there - flapping with wings in her soul! It won't stay for long pierced on the barbed fence.

The whole film is built with lightedness, with enjoyment of life, with a touch of humour, despite the serious problems it centers on. This contrasts starkly with another recent palestinian film on a related theme - "Atash". But this is the lightedness of the young yet not roughened heart. It accepts everything without hind thoughts or preconceptions, it is still able to see the beauty in anything that surrounds it. This heart, thanks to an amazing director, transforms the film itself! It offers to us to see unprejudiced the beautiful characters, the striking landscape (the absurdist military border even adds to this!), the flying kites, the happy-despite-everything children and the great music!

The main story is braided with so many other important lines, though they may be barely noticeable! They are warm tributes of the director to the local life, to the locals, to their style. If I have to mention just one of these cameos that stayed with me, it is the deep and honest love between a sister and her small brother! Through the sum of all cameos this film becomes a fully fleshed and very loving portrait of a society in transition between Tradition and Modernity. Society that even put in the transitional confusion, and in the odd border situation, does not loose identity and character. Imagine your old mother coming to visit you, the emigrant to London, and on the airport clearing the baggage security with dozens of home-made jars of baked paprikas, mashed aubergines or quince conserve. This is the homey taste of this film! : )

Finally, it is a film about Love! About many loves, in fact. Even the man getting drunk and sleeping with prostitutes every night because his village was annexed by the Israelis on the day of his wedding and he never saw the wife he was married to! This was love too.

It's impossible to make sense of this movie from the way it's edited. The scenes make no sense as they are stuck together in a random fashion that denies the viewer any form of story continuity. There are a couple of subplots that take place that are totally unrelated to the main story. One has to wonder what the producers and writers were smoking when they put together this "film". Hats worse is that a streaming site like Netflix would even stream it!

Maybe it is the lack of resources, but this film is flawed. The narrative is uneven. The latent dramatic elements are poorly explored or presented in an unsatisfactory manner. The quality of the acting varies from moment to moment. Overall a film that makes you wonder whether you should bother to sit through to the end.

Yet, you do stay. It is because one is curious about what will happen to the principal character, Lamia, who is to marry the old fashioned way: the husband is chosen by the elders of the community. Staying to the end has its reward. The allegorical terminus of the film is what it is all about, a political commentary on war and, to a lesser extent, tradition. The omnipresent kite the symbol of liberty, unhindered by borders and flying freely in the air.

There are a couple of humorous moments, only one of which works particularly well. The music is pleasant enough and neither hinders or helps. What remains of value is the depiction of how people can be affected by armed conflict and occupation, and the beautiful landscape of what I presume to be southern Lebanon.