It will not be the last film on the Lebanese war that you'll ever see, because the industry is just getting on its feet, but it is most certainly the most selfcentered of all.
It depicts the somehow distorted facts of the life of one Ziad El-Doueiri(the director) in an attempt to show you all fine people what is the Lebanese war. It is far more complicated than this simplified version of it. Even we cannot figure it yet.
Let talk about the film itself. The script is pathetic, there is no story, it seems to me like a student film with a little more of a budget (gee man, I wanna a bus and a lot of machine guns and I want them to go boom, so please can we do that?) with no real ending.
The dialogs are simple, no real one anyways, just a little bit of statements and a lot of shouting from a character. But in this nightmare, some scenes are worth it, like the bicycle scene and the underwear scene. Better yet, and in defense of this film, I must say that it is an overall "chemin initiatique" for the boys, and this we understand very clearly. But if you noticed my use of the term "film" and not "movie" to indicate the subject, it's because in no way good or bad, this film can be rated a movie, for its lack of entertaining and logic.
All in all, it's an over-rated, distorted events piece of film. And what bother me most, is that some of the Lebanese viewers found it very bad, but very good for Lebanese industry. Though it's tragically true, it also very pathetic.
Well, let's hope for the best, in the best of worlds possible.
It depicts the somehow distorted facts of the life of one Ziad El-Doueiri(the director) in an attempt to show you all fine people what is the Lebanese war. It is far more complicated than this simplified version of it. Even we cannot figure it yet.
Let talk about the film itself. The script is pathetic, there is no story, it seems to me like a student film with a little more of a budget (gee man, I wanna a bus and a lot of machine guns and I want them to go boom, so please can we do that?) with no real ending.
The dialogs are simple, no real one anyways, just a little bit of statements and a lot of shouting from a character. But in this nightmare, some scenes are worth it, like the bicycle scene and the underwear scene. Better yet, and in defense of this film, I must say that it is an overall "chemin initiatique" for the boys, and this we understand very clearly. But if you noticed my use of the term "film" and not "movie" to indicate the subject, it's because in no way good or bad, this film can be rated a movie, for its lack of entertaining and logic.
All in all, it's an over-rated, distorted events piece of film. And what bother me most, is that some of the Lebanese viewers found it very bad, but very good for Lebanese industry. Though it's tragically true, it also very pathetic.
Well, let's hope for the best, in the best of worlds possible.