WEST BEIRUT
Reviewed by Harvey Karten Cowboy Booking International Director: Ziad Doueiri Writer: Ziad Doueiri Cast: Rami Doueiri, Mohamad Chamas, Leila Karam, Mahmoud Mabsout.
When I was a kid and saw films made in Europe during the late 1940s, I noted that the teens on the Continent seemed more mature than the youngsters in the States. I asked my dad whether this was because the 14-year-olds on the screen were actors and not real people, or whether their early ripening was in fact true. He explained that here in the U.S. we hadn't had a war on our soil since 1865, whereas the Europeans were afflicted with every kind of armed struggle in this century. Bombings and machine-gunnings that go on day after day for five years--as in the case of the Second World War--can make kids grow up early. Presumably in countries like France and Germany today, the 14-year-olds are able to play out their childhoods as nature intended-- kidding around, acting their own age rather than like small versions of adults.
But many areas of the world have not been that fortunate even decades after World War II. Lebanon--like Northern Ireland--had been torn apart by sectarian violence, in their case pitting Muslims against Christians. Simply put, though Lebanon--one of the few countries with more of their people living abroad than in their home state--had a Muslim majority, the Christians ran the government. When the situation became irreconcilable, civil war broke out, so that during the years that Ziad Doueiri situated his coming-of-age movie (1975), the city of Beirut was divided between an Eastern part controlled by Christians and a Muslim sector in the West. Between the two areas was a no-man's-land, Zeytuni, which in this remarkable film becomes the focus of the most laughs. The city's best brothel was located there, the one area in which Christians and Muslims were both welcome. "The bed knows no religion," proclaimed the Madam. In fact males who patronized the whorehouse essentially used it as a sanctuary from the fighting. If a patron would hold aloft a bra or a panty while walking to the house, the snipers would treat the garment like a white flag and not fire on the turned-on fellas.
Coming-of-age dramas often juxtapose the most tragic scenes against great humor. After all, in life, even during some pretty devastating circumstances, people still need to laugh and find ways to do so. Much of the comedy in "West Beirut" comes from the vulgar dialogue that Lebanese citizens freely indulged in as though they were living in New York, exchanging insults with one another that are not directly related to the war. The comedy starts early on as Lebanon's own Mrs. Tingle, a teacher in the city's French high school, first leads the youngsters in a patriotic French song only to be subverted as one kid sneaks into the building to grab an electric megaphone and from the balcony pilots the boys and girls into a Lebanese strain. In the principal role of sixteen- year-old Tarek, Rami Doueiri, the younger brother of the director, is made by the teacher to write his name on the board, but he can scarcely spell "Monsieur." Although the instructor tries to instill the lads with a love for France which "gave you Lebanese your culture and your political boundaries," Tarek dislikes going to school, particularly one which has a Francophile agenda.
Director Doueiri squeezes more knowledge of the Lebanon of the seventies into his 105 minute film than you could learn on your own in five times that length of time, creating humorous, bombastic, and wrenching dialogue virtually each line of which tells us something more about the culture of that small beleaguered nation. We quickly learn that Tarek's father, Riad, is notably pro-French though a Muslim, but that despite the bombings and shooting going on around him which drive his educated wife Hala (Carmen Lebbos) to utter distraction and to a desire to leave the country for good, her husband will not hear of this. "In America, they call us sand niggers...we're all terrorists to them," he explains, and what's more he is an ardent nationalist who brags about the contributions made by the Arabs while Europeans were still crawling in caves.
While Ziad Doueiri has fun with side characters--with sandwich and flour supplier Hassan (Mahmoud Mabsout) who treats his favorite kid to food on the house, with the Madam of the country's famous brothel, Oum Walid (Leila Karam), who is perplexed by her new 16-year-old customer, by an obese neighbor who cavils about everything from the rooster that wakes her up each morning to her couch potato husband who watches soccer all day--he hones in on his young brother who is in the starring role of a teen. For most of the story Tarek acts like any American his age. He has posters of American movies ("Airplane") on his wall. He cuts up in school. He frolics with his friend Omar (Mohamad Chamas) and is repeatedly chastised by Omar for risking his life just to get some super-8 film developed in the antagonistic East Beirut. His girl friend is the orphaned May (Rola Al Amin) who for some dumb reason insists on wearing a crucifix although she lives in Muslim West Beirut. By the conclusion of the movie, young Doueiri has grown up but not in the good sense of the term. He is in tears, wondering what he will do if the bombs kill his parents and he is orphaned in much the way his girl has been.
One of the fascinating aspects of this intriguing, fast- moving film is the background of one of the performers. Mohamad Chamas (Omar) was a street kid, the equivalent of an inner-city American teen, whose mother was killed in the 1970s Civil War and whose heroin-addicted father abandoned him years earlier. Amazingly this fella, who turns out a professional performance as Doueiri's best friend, had no acting background when he was hired and, despite the quality of his work he not only has not been scouted but is today living in a refugee camp on the outskirts of Beirut. Let's hope enough people with clout get to this wonderful movie, a film that both poignantly and humorously tells us what it's like to grow up in a war zone, so that performers like Chamas can get the acting contracts they deserve.
Not Rated. Running Time: 105 minutes. (C) 1999 Harvey Karten
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