In a little more than five hours, the documentary Abbas Fahdel divided into two parts, immerses the viewer in the months preceding and following the Iraq war in 2003.
uncles, cousins, brother and neighbors. They make jokes, to cavil, discuss current events, everyday problems. The house is like this, the lawn chair like that, that is the brand of the car, like the clothes of the cousin, hair granny, cutting the mustache uncle … the provincial family comes to visit later we will turn. A family film. But there’s a countdown. An announced catastrophe inevitable.
It is not known exactly when, soon there will be war. The Americans will attack. When in doubt, you panic a little, we joke a little. One exists. Destruction, deaths, shortages, humiliation of foreign occupation are planned, but maybe, probably, the end of so long and atrocious dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.
in the heads
the ravages of war, the promise of democracy, at the time they are abstractions, and they are incommensurable with each other.
in his family the middle class in Baghdad, Abbas Fahdel records all this, words, gestures, faces. Looks like he never turned off his camera, and everything seems to matter to turn to him, details, moments where nothing happens -d’ailleurs, it goes almost nothing significant. Or what happens is in the heads.
In the heads of these people we, spectators are encouraged to share the intimacy and that they may represent as what will befall them countries to their existence, while also trying to think of something else as much as possible.
And in our heads to us, who are not Iraqis, we who have not lived war, but know one another what will happen in the days following these few weeks of February-March 2003 which devoted the first 160 minutes of the film, which constitutes the first part of Homeland . “Before the fall”
in the shadow of war
Abbas Fahdel vigorously asserts the necessity of this term, it is not obliged ‘subscribe. This is not just a question of length overall, but especially feeling the shots follow over the water of daily events, the situations are a priori held as interesting in ‘shadow of the coming war, these characters for which the director has affection (these are the family members) are necessarily capable of arousing the interest of watching them on a screen. . This is far from being so obvious
The situation faced by those films Fahdel is obviously dramatic, this is not enough to make every shot a film plane of each protagonist a character – we think many times while watching the film that the issue of character is no less present in the documentary as in fiction, it would perhaps even rather the opposite.
time violence
Wiseman Lanzmann, Sokurov’s spiritual Voices Wang Bing in the West rails or recent Death in the Land of the Encantos Lav Diaz, one knows the virtues of long documentary course. They are many and varied, they are never acquired beforehand. Whatever the interest of the subject and the sincerity of the person filming, they do say that frame after frame, cup after cup. Otherwise, the flexibility of the digital camera is easily transformed into a trap.
The duration of the first part also has the effect, perhaps because of counterpart to that of the second, the 2:54 of “After the battle”. We here in the weeks and the months following the attack on the coalition, Baghdad fell, Iraq is defeated, Saddam is on the run. A terrible disorder reigns in the city, looters delivered, inspect and sometimes abuses the US military, the attacks by groups still obscure, the shortage of water, electricity, food, medicine. In the home of his family and supporting its members in town, Abbas Fahdel collects a succession of notations on the spot, which slowly up the feeling of a terrifying chaos.
Listening to the people in the Street, later requesting the testimonies of victims of the situation, crossing the testimonies of the horrors perpetrated by the number without Saddam police and that we can now speak and often absurd narrative violence committed by the occupation troops, following always simultaneously the fate of the cousin who passes his exams in college or games of toddlers in the garden, installation of this second part succeeds this time an assembly in accordance with the infernal mess which it bears witness.
intimate trouble
It shows both people “ still alive” the family and close associates, and ” survivors “, victims most directly affected by the US attack and its consequences or by the aftermath of the Baathist terror that decimated entire families in a state of destitution and extreme despair. This process, which is the major success of the film is done through a Twist , where the director leaves the only kind of home-movie for mingling the story elements from taking evidence in various Baghdad neighborhoods.
Figure very present, the nephew of the director, Haidar, 11, a banter Gavroche and a very sharp eye on what is happening, gradually appears as the epicenter of this tornado ruins worries of daily violent deaths in the corner. Until slams a shot again.
The sheer tragedy on which stops the film leaves a terrible feeling, which in retrospect is diffused throughout the film. Not that he lacked horror, but how it affects directly, intimately director and the viewer , which is naturally linked to empathy for the boy, conceals a troubling power. The world of the living and the survivor between brutally, and in extremis, collide.
The end comes as shake again the information flood of sensations and emotions that have crossed over the almost three hours. Make a film about the chaos he requires to make a chaotic film? Surely not always. And to be fair, this approach does little to think what will happen after, and part of the current situation in the Middle East, beyond the diagnosis clear: Americans flanked a terrible mess in the region by attacking Iraq in 2003, and we will, but first them, the locals have not finished paying the consequences.
in addition, this motley flood of hassle and abominations captured in familiarity height certainly gives a strange feeling, for lack of a more accurate understanding of what happened then, and since, let alone what is happening now. A feeling of what? Feeling very strong, and rare, a feeling that tend to destroy the media or fiction films: only the very clear and very powerful sense of belonging to the same world as these people. That’s a lot.
Homeland: Iraq year zero
Abbas Fahdel. In two parts: “Before the Fall” / “After the Battle”. Duration: 5:34. Released February 10
Sessions
No comments:
Post a Comment