| WEST BEIRUT Director: Ziad Doueiri “My advice to other filmmakers is if you want to replicate a war, do it in Beirut. The army supplied me with troops and even a helicopter to shoot scenes. Sometimes, I would be risking my life hanging out of the copter with a camera and Beirutis would climb onto their roofs and wave. We would frantically radio to the crew below to ask residents not to be so hospitable and stay inside.” Ziad Doueiri The film medium is one of the best ways to present audiences with political conflicts and there are many countries in the world right now that are dealing with issues of political and religious divisiveness that have been around for centuries. This is the third foreign film this year to deal with the bitter and violent break-up of a country: the other two are Earth - forthcoming from India and Cabaret Balkan - released earlier this year from former Yugoslavia. The time is 1975 and it is the eve of the partition of Beruit into West and East sections. Two high-school aged friends -- Tarek (Rami Doueiri) and Omar (Mohommad Chamas) -- witness their country split and the neighborhoods they know so well, turn into a violent region they hardly recognize. Both boys spend their time attending school, playing games, chasing girls and showing an early fascination with filmmaking. But once the violence stars they realize their world will never be quite the same again. They must now learn to survive the turmoil and clashes that they witness around them. First time director Ziad Doueiri -- noted for his work as a cameraman with Quentin Tarantino -- now gets his chance to direct and the results are mixed. The look of the film is polished -- with some cinema-verite techniques thrown in and the mostly non-professional actors performances are credible if not thin. The subject is certaintly interesting as it tries to mix the coming-of-age film with a politcal drama but -- maybe because it is a first film --- it doesn’t translate as well as director Doueiri would like. Part of the problem is that the plot goes exactly where one would expect it to go; many characters that are introduced fall off to the side and the script often only scratches the surface of the Beruit issue. The film lacks the necessary urgency that goes along with films about war torn regions. Especially if you compare it with another great film about Beirut made in the early 1990s called Hors La Vie, which is so much moe effective because it deals directly with the impact that the war has on a kidnapped character. There is no doubt that the division of the country is sad for everyone and it is somewhat convincingly conveyed in the way the family and some of the locals are affected by it. The neighborhoods they live in become undone; locals begin to beat on one another and traditional religious rivalries come to the forfront. Escalating tensions bring out the hot heads -- a couple notable instances include a fat woman who berates everyone within shouting distance and a guerilla patrolman who though he claims to be protecting the neighborhood is really no more than a bully. The film has a couple humorous bits the best being when Tarek hiding in a car during a military attack ends up riding over the border to the East side where he encounters an infamous brothel. Another being when he learns that he and his friends seem to be safe if they run through the streets waving women’s underwear over their heads. As funny as this is the film still feels methodical and staged most of the way through. And as a result many of the incidents feel annoyingly contrived. For instance, in the beginning Tarek is tossed out of class for being insolent to a French teacher. He walks into the hallway and happens to look out a window at the exact moment that the terrorist activity that starts the war is taking place. It’s good to see films from a region that is rarely seen in theaters and this film will find some fans because it is a good effort but because everything and everybody seems to be directed rather than naturally associated with the violence around them it falls short of greatness. - Matt Langdon |