Film Reviews: May 2008 Archives

Le Grand Voyage is a road movie with a difference. Not only does it show the gradual growth of trust and liking between father and son in the course of a long journey, it also shows the meeting of different cultures, namely western secularism and traditional Islam. The kind of Islam that the father practises is strict but not fundamentalist, and the positive aspects of his faith are represented with impressive impartiality. This is no mean feat in today's climate of paranoia and intolerance. One small example will help here: the father scrupulously shows charity to strangers, and gives alms. Although the son protests when he sees their dwindling supply of money being given away, he has clearly learnt something because at the end of the film we see him giving money to a beggar on the street. This small detail, showing his change of heart, is typical of the way the director, Ismael Ferroukhi, works: through subtle touches. It is a very thoughtful film, but certainly not a humourless one. There were many points where I found myself laughing out loud, and reflecting that it was the best film I had seen in a long time (and I've seen quite a few recently).

A little plot summary here will be useful. Reda has been saddled with the unenviable task of driving his somewhat taciturn old father on an overland pilgrimage to Mecca, starting from the south of France where they live. This is a very short-notice arrangement, as it was to have been his elder brother who would do the driving, but the brother is arrested for drunk driving. Reda is not best pleased as he has important exams coming up, and also he is seeing a girl from his class and does not want to leave her for a long stretch of time. However, he puts family duty first and accepts the challenge. For the first part of the journey, our sympathies are definitely with Reda rather than with the father, who seems grumpy, unreasonable and generally awkward. For example, he puts his son's mobile phone in a litter bin while his son is sleeping because he thinks it is distracting him from the pilgrimage. He also prefers to trust to his own sense of direction rather than maps, causing them to get lost in a particularly bleak part of eastern Europe. However, it becomes apparent in the course of the film that he does actually care a lot for his son, and that there are always strong principles behind his actions. It is the way he usually refuses to justify or explain his actions with words that causes problems initially. Language is an interesting area in the film. The son speaks almost entirely in French, whereas the father prefers Arabic, so that their conversations are strangely polyglot. It only becomes apparent later on that the father can actually speak French but stubbornly chooses not to: his surprising fluency in French is demonstrated at the French embassy in a Turkish town when the two of them are trying to claim reimbursement after they've been robbed by a confidence trickster. Reda is to blame for this disaster, as he had been too willing to trust the wily man who offers himself as their guide; Reda allowed himself to get drunk one night, providing the thief with his opportunity. The father's suspicions turned out to have been right all along.

To return to the question of language: the fact that different varieties of Arabic are spoken in different parts of the world was reflected. As the two men are nearing their destination, they share a picnic with some other pilgrims in a wayside stopping place in the desert. The father explains that his son only speaks Morroccan Arabic, not classical Arabic, so he would be unable to join in the conversation. The other pilgrims are amazed at the distance the men have covered (nearly three thousand miles) and are full of praise. Reda, humbled by his experience with the trickster, has started to see his father's point of view by this point, and has stopped complaining about the laboriousness of the journey. When he asked his father why he didn't just take the plane to Mecca, the father explained that it is not simply arriving at the destination that counts, but the means taken to achieve that end, and a more difficult journey will yield greater spiritual benefit. When the men actually arrive in Mecca, the overwhelming number of pilgrims converging on the spot is very graphically conveyed: the crowds pushing forward towards the mosque create a feeling of claustrophobia, yet there is also an atmosphere of elation. The cinematography at this point becomes a bit dream-like, as if Reda is having a kind of waking vision. It is not clear, by the end of the film, whether he has actually been 'converted' from secularism to religious faith, but he has certainly had a life-changing experience. Without wishing to spoil the surprise for anyone intending to see the film, I'd say that the journey back will be very different from the journey out.

The one thing that slightly spoilt the film for me was the cheesy music! At moments of good will and relaxation, some very artificial 'feel good' music blasted out, annoying me a lot. Why not use proper arabic music, either classical, or one of the many popped-up variants that are popular among immigrants in France? That would surely be more authentic and interesting? Apart from that, though, the film was very impressive. The use of humour was very well-judged. One particularly funny moment was the sheep scene. Reda is complaining about the fact that their diet lacks meat, so the father buys a live sheep at the next village they stop at, and puts it on the back seat of the car. Reda only realises this after they've set off again and he hears a funny noise coming from behind him. When they try to kill the poor creature though, the father brandishing his knife, Reda fails to hold it down and it runs off into the desert, bleating. There were many quirky scenes like this, and some lovely landscape shots too. As I've already indicated, this was the best film I've seen this year.

'Honeydripper' is the name of the bar where the action of this film takes place, and if that word suggests 'slow' and 'sweet' then that pretty much sums up the film itself too. The proprietor of the establishment, Tyrone Purvis, is determined to have one last crack at making the place financially viable before giving in to pressure from the legal owner, who wants to put it to a different use. Tyrone's big idea is to invite 'Guitar Sam' to come and give a live performance, since Sam is a big name and plays the kind of music that is more to the taste of the younger generation than the old-style Blues that has been on offer at Honeydripper up to that point. As the fateful Saturday night of the performance approaches, all kinds of situations and relationships in the community start to crystallise around the event, as if everything hangs off it.

The great thing about this film is the script; the dialogue and the characterisation are brilliant, and would win praise if the production were shown on a West End stage. A good example is the conversation between Delilah (Tyrone's wife) and Amanda Winship, the white lady she works for as cleaner. The unfinished sentences and uneasy pauses in the conversation reveal much about social boundaries in the society of Alabama in 1950, the time when the film is set. I'm not sure what else John Sayles (the director/writer) has done in the past, but this really does him credit. In this film, he revisits and reworks many of the standard myths about Blues music, but nostalgia is resisted. Sayles is interested in what happens when times change and society moves on. Of course, Blues music never died, but got incorporated into the mainstream of rock and roll, and that is the process that we begin to see happen when a young guitarist (Sonny, played by Gary Clark Jr) turns up in the town Melody (where Honeydripper is located) and produces his strange but magical electric guitar.

I've recently watched all of the films in the excellent documentary series Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues (different directors for each one, but all overseen by Scorsese) and so I'm particularly 'tuned-in' to Blues history. This film makes a good contribution to the ongoing debate about this important part of American culture. However, it also seemed to be a story simply about youth and age, the passing of time and fading of hopes, that worked on a universal level. Maybe this is why Sayles didn't overplay the old Deep South melodrama too much: maybe he wanted the story to stand alone, rather like a fable. At times I felt that the picture we are given of life in Melody seemed almost too implausibly clean, and not gritty enough. The cotton pickers didn't even seem to be sweating for heavens' sake! Perhaps this was part of the attempt to present an upbeat vision that we can all relate to and share without feeling too oppressed by darker issues. As the story slowly unfolds, we are drawn into the web of human relationships - Tyrone and his wife, Maceo and Nadine, the sheriff, China Doll and Sonny - so that we feel almost like one of the neighbours. At times, watching this felt like seeing a production of Chekhov's Cherry Orchard.