This French-Moroccan production is something of an oddity and unlikely to be to all tastes in the current political climate, but it is certainly a strange sort of road movie. The character only billed as "The Father" is a Moroccan Arab who has lived in France for some thirty years without noticeably assimilating. His second son Reda, however, feels more French than Arab or Muslim. When his father decides that he is getting on and must make the pilgrimage to Mecca before he dies, Reda is obliged to put his own life on hold and to drive his father the 3000-odd miles each way, after his elder brother loses his driving license.
That he is reluctant to do so is only the start of the problem since there are so may gaps between the pair -- language, generation, and belief. The strain between them worsens when Reda discovers that his father has binned his mobile telephone some 200 miles back -- his only link to his non-Muslim girlfriend. When he asks why his father could not fly to Mecca like everyone else, he gets a philosophical reply that the more difficult the journey, the more meaningful it is. So we follow the pair across Italy, Croatia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Syria, and Jordan with no time allowed for any sightseeing en route. What we do get are scenes of their being lost because the father who can not read maps insists that certain roads be taken, having their back seat occupied by first a peasant woman with whom they can not communicate and then a supposedly helpful Turk who steals their money (or not, as it happens), finding themselves literally snowed in when they spend the night in their car in the mountains, and their hand-to-mouth travels and travails on the road.
At least once Reda storms off in disgust since he is unable to communicate with his father or to understand his dogged insistance that they reach Mecca, but ultimately they do for their eight-night Haj. When the father does not return at the end of the first day to their campsite outside the city. a frantic Reda goes in search of him among the throngs of pilgrims. (The actual views of the shrine at Mecca and the hordes of believers is quite staggering). He is unable to find him and becomes more and more hysterical, until security guards take him to a vault full of shrouded corpses... It's a heartwrenching finale to the reluctant youth's journey into manhood.
1 comment:
A heart wrenching finale possibly..... but I think it's also the dawn of a new rising.... that the father knew he was dying - that was why he made the trip, and the feeling you get from being at Mecca, or the things you could learn about yourself was what he left for his son.
Wow - had forgotten this. On the big screen (good old Curzon Soho) you really do feel part of that crowd scene, or at least want to, the idea of finding something you can't see is appealing
It was a nice glimpse of two generations - maybe how the old religious ways are a thing of the past - as the mobile phone thing shows, and how you don't know what you're looking for until you've found it, but by then it's too late.
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