The Oath (Director: Laura Poitras): Poitras’ follow-up to the Oscar-nominated My Country, My Country, The Oath is one of the most penetrating portraits of Islamic fundamentalism I’ve ever seen. It’s a story of two young men, one idealistic and the other naive, who are swept up into jihadism only to find themselves part of some of the most world-shaking events in recent history.
We first meet Abu Jindal behind the wheel of his taxi, haggling with and ferrying passengers through the chaotic streets of the Yemeni capital city of Sana’a. He’s in his mid-30s with a wife and young son, trying hard to make ends meet. We soon learn that he once had much grander ambitions. From 1996 to 2000, Abu served as Osama Bin Laden’s bodyguard in Afghanistan. His brother-in-law Salim Hamdan was Bin Laden’s driver. Then we learn that while trying to get his family out of Afghanistan after the US invasion in late 2001, Salim was picked up by Pakistani troops looking for Arab prisoners to sell to the Americans. He has been imprisoned at Guantanamo ever since.
From here, the film shifts back and forth, from Abu’s new life in Yemen to the upcoming military trial of Salim. Abu, though free, struggles with guilt. Why is Salim in prison and not him? We come to learn that only Abu took an oath of loyalty to Bin Laden. He had been the idealistic young man who recruited Salim and many others to jihad. Lacking job opportunities and father figures, they gravitated naturally to the certainty and security that surrounded Bin Laden’s group. Abu eagerly swears his loyalty, while Salim, not quite as certain, is content to take the lowly job of driver. Abu is soon in Bin Laden’s inner circle, not only serving as his bodyguard, but also as his “emir of hospitality,” welcoming new recruits to the camp and determining their suitability as soldiers. He swears that Salim never knew anything about operations or weapons, and his guilt is only compounded by his family relationship. Bin Laden had ordered the two young friends to return to Yemen and marry two sisters, and now Salim’s wife and children (the youngest of whom he’s never met) are constant reminders to Abu of his responsibility.
Abu Jindal is an enormously charismatic man, with an easy smile and a touching devotion to his young son Habib. When he claims to feel pain over Salim’s continued imprisonment, we believe him. The mystery that hangs over the film, why is Abu free and Salim imprisoned, is eventually revealed and I don’t want to spoil it here. What is so interesting about the character of Abu is that he is obviously still a jihadist, but that he has changed his mind on many things. He claims to have always been against the killing of civilians, preferring to meet his enemies “soldier to soldier” on the battlefield, but after serving time in prison in Yemen, he has renounced violence as well. He is an ideological soldier now, arming young Muslim men to become the doctors, lawyers, preachers and engineers that he claims are also needed in Islam’s struggle against the values of the West.
The sections of the film set in Guantanamo are equally important, though less compelling since we never see Salim. His lawyers and the US military prosecutors lay out their cases, and these deliberations form some of the most important legal proceedings in recent history, but all we know of Salim is through his letters home. His absence haunts the film, as we come to believe that he truly is someone simply caught up in something much bigger than himself.
Both men’s reflections on their past actions and beliefs are candid and moving, even as we sense that Abu will never stop believing that Islam is locked in an eternal struggle with every other belief system in the world. It’s sad that we can feel so close to someone and yet so divided at the same time.
Cinematically, the film is stunning, mostly due to the footage from Yemen, a land where the buildings are beautiful and the women are covered. Poitras quite often focuses her camera on the children. Seeing Salim’s beautiful young daughters growing up without him makes us keenly aware that separating a man from his family is a terrible thing. At the same time, watching young Habib trying to learn his prayers from Abu, we worry that blind obedience to a father can be an equally terrible thing. And yes, my Western prejudices also made me sad that these laughing and chatty little girls will soon be covered from head to toe and silenced. It’s hard to reconcile that that is what Abu and Salim were fighting for in Afghanistan, what they want to spread around the world. And that is also what makes The Oath so compelling. I can’t wait to see it again.
Official site of the film
Here is the Q&A with director Laura Poitras from after the screening, conducted by Hot Docs Director of Programming Sean Farnel:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Duration: 18:01
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGHgn2-I3YU
(9/10)
Tagged as:
#hotdocs10,
afghanistan,
guantanamo,
islam,
terrorism,
yemen
Hadewijch (Director: Bruno Dumont): In this, his fifth feature film, Bruno Dumont has created something as mysterious and beautiful as his protagonist. We meet young Celine in a convent, where she is hoping to take her vows as a nun. But her refusal to eat and other acts of self-denial worry the Mother Superior, who turns her out into the world, hoping to rid her of what she considers “self-love.” Though she lives with her wealthy parents in the centre of Paris, they’re distant and there’s some suggestion of buried issues with her father.
One day she meets some boys in a café, who are amazed at her trusting nature. Yassine takes a special liking to her, although she rebuffs his romantic advances, claiming she only has love for Christ. The young Muslim is befuddled but still besotted, so he continues their friendship. Eventually she visits the home he shares with his brother Nassir in the housing projects outside the city. Nassir is a “serious” Muslim, according to Yassine, and he thinks they’ll hit it off. He has no idea.
Nassir recognizes the fire that burns in Celine’s heart, and though their religions are different, their passion is the same. Over time, he convinces Celine that God is not only about love, but about justice as well. Soon after that, he takes her to Lebanon to show her the injustice he finds there. Dumont patiently lays the groundwork for a stunning climax that shows just how easily love can turn to violence.
Meanwhile, in a parallel plot, we follow David, a petty criminal working in construction at the convent. He breaks his parole and is sent back to jail for a few months. It’s not clear what his purpose is until the final scene, in which the two lives stand in stark contrast to each other. Celine lives in extremes, reaching for holiness and finding tragedy. David is an everyman, flawed but more capable of love than Celine could ever be. The intersection of their lives leads to a powerfully moving ending.
Dumont put his faith in non-professional Julie Sokolowski to play Celine, and the decision pays off. She portrays her disconnection from the world naturally, even as she radiates a forbidden sexuality. Her purity attracts men, but she only has eyes for Christ, and her obsession verges on the sexual. Her prayers are painful, expressing her yearning to be with Christ even as she protests his absence. She longs for the ecstasy and oblivion of union with God, and the connection with some of the rhetoric of Islamic terrorism couldn’t be more clear.
This is the first of Dumont’s films I’ve seen, and I’m captivated by his intelligence and willingness to explore such interior issues as religious faith and obsession. In the post-screening Q&A, he revealed that Hadewijch was a real mystic from the Middle Ages, and his exploration of what a modern example would look like in a world filled with political action makes for one smart and haunting film.
Official site of the film (en francais)
Here is the Q&A with director Bruno Dumont from after the screening:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Duration: 27:10
(9/10)
Tagged as:
#tiff09,
christianity,
faith,
france,
fundamentalism,
islam,
religion
C’est dur d’être aimé par des cons (It’s Hard Being Loved By Jerks) (Director: Daniel Leconte): The closing night film of Cinefranco this year is perhaps uniquely suited to a francophone audience. Despite the presence of subtitles, Leconte’s documentary assumes a fairly broad knowledge of current French politics and media, and will likely be slightly impenetrable to the rest of us. That is not to say that it doesn’t explore important issues, but it does so in such a narrow context that it will be difficult for anyone not already familiar with the subject in question to hang in for almost two hours.
The subject in question is the court case brought in February 2006 by several French Muslim groups against the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Long known for its irreverent political cartoons, the magazine was accused of crossing the line when it republished the infamous cartoons of Mohammed that appeared first in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005. In addition, it added several of its own cartoons, including a cover image of a crying Mohammed with the caption “Mahomet débordé par les intégristes” (“Mohammed overwhelmed by fundamentalists”). The speech balloon provides the title for the film: C’est dur d’être aimé par des cons (“It’s hard being loved by jerks”). The film is an in-depth account of the three-day trial, with footage from outside the courtroom as well as interviews with the lawyers and witnesses, who often recount their testimony in considerable detail. What’s not particularly clear is when these interviews were filmed. Some seem to be very soon after or even during the trial, while others are more hazy.
Significant to the events was the ongoing presidential campaign, which led most of the candidates to weigh in supporting the freedom of the press (although some were more committed and vocal than others). Eventual winner Nicolas Sarkozy sends a letter of support which is introduced dramatically on the trial’s first day, while Socialist leader François Hollande appears in person to testify for the magazine.
There’s never much doubt that Philippe Val, the editor of Charlie Hebdo, will be acquitted, and the parade of witnesses will be a succession of unknown figures for many, but notable among the defenders of the cartoons was Claude Lanzmann, director of the epic Holocaust documentary Shoah. When asked if there was any parallel between the portrayal of Muslims as terrorists and the racist caricatures of Jews promoted by the Nazis, Lanzmann dismisses the question by saying that the purpose of the cartoons was very different. I was frustrated by this answer and wanted there to be more exploration of this issue, but it was not forthcoming. This is especially interesting to me since in Canada, we have laws designed to prevent incidents of anti-semitism and hate speech targetting other groups. I wonder how far freedom of the press would extend here if offensive political cartoons were published.
The filmmaker’s perspective is quite clear from the beginning, and although the lawyers representing the Muslim side are articulate and intelligent, they are never quite able to make their case, either in the courtroom or in the film. To me, this is a bit of a missed opportunity, because by focussing so tightly on the court case rather than on the public debate it set off, the film denies us a chance to hear from some others on the issue. Another thing only hinted at is that many of the people professing support for “freedom of the press” and “freedom of speech” were notorious xenophobes and far right figures such as Jean Marie Le Pen. These supporters are hardly mentioned, making Val and his editorial staff seem like saintly figures galvanizing only the highest principles of the French citizenry, the protection of democracy and freedom.
I had just one more slight issue with the film, and although it might seem minor, it really grated on me by the end. The “score” as it were consisted of one piece of music about 30 seconds long that was used over and over and over. It sounded like music from a thriller that would accompany a bank heist or a police chase, and it was used to ratchet up the suspense during the trial, but it became annoying very quickly.
In conclusion, although I had some issues with the film itself from the perspective of a non-francophone, non-European, I think for a French audience this would be very fresh in their minds. Their familiarity with both the characters and the issues raised would make this far more relevant to that audience than to one here in North America. Nonetheless, it did show in broad strokes the issues facing the French people today around the clash between certain religious values and the freedoms of a democratic system.
The trailer below is only available in French, with no English subtitles:
(7/10)
Tagged as:
cinefranco,
france,
islam,
journalism,
law,
terrorism
