West Beirut (1998)
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West Beirut Movie Review
West Beirut is a 1998 Lebanese drama film directed by Ziad Doueiri and starring Rami Doueiri and Mohamad Chamas. It’s one of the country’s finest movies.
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“All Beirut knows who Oum Wallid is“
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In 1972 a civil war breaks out; Beirut is partitioned along a line separating the Muslim-Christian-Jewish mixed West Beirut from the quasi-Christian East Beirut. Tarek is now considered to live in West Beirut and is in high school, making Super 8 movies with his friend, Omar. His mother wants to leave the country; but his father refuses. Tarek spends time with May, an orphaned Christian girl living in his building. He then takes Omar and May there. Family tensions rise. Later on and as he comes of age, the war moves from adventure to a nationwide tragedy.
The film obviously deals with a hugely important event in Lebanon’s history, one that changed it for the worse. However, Doueiri smartly chose not to focus heavily on history and events and details. Instead, he chose to focus on his own experiences with the film being a semi-autobiographical tale.
That choice paid off and then some. The movie would have been a political and historical lesson had it been filmed that way, but this way it became so much more than that. Yes, it requires a bit of beforehand knowledge about this historical period and this country before going into it, but when you have that knowledge, the movie becomes extremely powerful as this beautiful story of one family struggling to survive in a war-torn city.
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The film was positioned in such a way that its first half was a genuine adventure flick, which was ingenious as the second half was anything but. Thus, the two stand in stark contrast, and both are amazing. Just following Tarek have his adventures in the other part of the city with his friends was a lot of fun and very endearing. It also reminded me of Romeo and Juliet but with no romance and with kids instead. It was all rather interesting and very cinematic.
His friendship was wonderfully developed, though the girl needed more screen time in my opinion. As for his parents, their arc holds so much heart and is the best part of the film for sure. Just listening to their conversations reminded me so much of my own parents, friends and family as they talked about my troublesome country, but of course this was much worse as Beirut was literally at war during the seventies, so the stakes were quite high.
The realism in the war scenes was fantastic and it led to a lot of immediacy and heartbreak after the adventurous first half. The mother wanting to leave and the father wanting to stay gave the movie a lot of amazing, heartfelt and genuinely relatable conflict for all of us who are living in third world countries ourselves.
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West Beirut is also very well filmed despite its small budget. It is clearly an indie movie as some scenes do tell it due to the budgetary constraints, but most of it was so cinematic, and that was in no small part thanks to the direction, which is fantastic. The acting is also surprisingly good, especially that of the child actors who are incredibly strong here. The ending is also touching. I just wished for a bit better characterization, but otherwise the film is terrific.
