Movie in the Spotlight:
The Insult
2017
The Insult is a Lebanese film, directed by Ziad Doueiri, nominated for best foreign-language film at the 90th Academy Awards. The film’s roots lie deep in Lebanese politics, centering around a fracas between a Lebanese Christian auto mechanic named Tony (Adel Karam) and the Palestinian refugee Yasser (Kamel El Basha) who enters his life. Its execution is pure melodrama flash and high courtroom drama (B. Hertz, The Globe and Mail, 25/1/2018).
A trivial, personal conflict explodes into something much larger, a drama that consumes a city and a nation. Eventually, the courts are involved. Memories of past atrocities are dredged up, and Lebanon’s civil war, which officially ended in 1990, seems on the verge of erupting all over again. The Insult is a fascinating history lesson. It is also a reminder that resentment and hatred don’t necessarily recede when the fighting stops. People have long memories, and so do groups whose identities rest in part on seeing one another as enemies (A.O. Scott, NYTimes, 10/1/2018).
The grace and precision of the performances, not only Mr. Karam and Mr. El Basha’s, but also those of the actors playing the colleagues, advocates, surprise witnesses and bureaucrats, push against the director’s fondness for grand statements and obvious ironies. This is an honest assessment of the never-ending conflict between decency and cruelty that rages in every nation, neighbourhood and heart.
In Arabic with a little Hebrew, English subtitles.
Watch trailer…
Review by Dolores Luber
