I have never found much merit in any film version of Romeo and Juliet that I’ve seen: not George Cukor’s (1936), not Renato Castellani’s (1954), which took the Golden Lion of St. Mark at Venice, not Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise’s (West Side Story, 1961), not Franco Zeffirelli’s (1968), not Baz Luhrmann’s (1996). Would I have better luck with an Arabic version in the Algerian desert?
While lame when attending to its “Romeo” and “Juliet,” here, Amin and Myriam, Mohamed Chouikh’s L’arche du désert, from Algeria, France, Switzerland and Germany, is strong, fierce, engrossing, visually stunning. Chouikh and color cinematographer Mustafa Ben Mihoub (best cinematography, Ouagadougou Panafrican Film and Television Festival) have collaborated on a film that absorbs and relocates its Shakespearean material, not only to the Algerian setting but to the bowels of its own culture and experience, and connects with Shakespeare’s principal concern, not sappy puppy love but violence. This version ends in a bloodbath that, stingingly, is more reminiscent of Hamlet than of Shakespeare’s earlier traged;y.
The cannot-quite-be-lovers here are of absolutely no interest. We have here a Romeo and Juliet without either a Romeo or a Juliet of any substance. The feud between their families is everything, and the young pair exist only to exacerbate this feud so that the very existence of “the city”—this is the English translation that the DVD provides—is imperiled by the feud. (Amin’s forced “exile” is, surprisingly, not so far; Amin leaves his house for a place still within the city’s limits.) In the watching, because of our expectations, we are likely to consider this a flaw; but the insubstantiality of Myriam and Amin underscores the monstrous arbitrariness of the feud. The warring families seize upon a tryst between the two children in order to self-righteously inflame themselves and thus justify to themselves their uncivil behavior. Chouikh’s “flaw,” then, helps accurately analyze a situation of social and political violence.
An especially remarkable passage indicates the male inspection that Myriam must undergo, with both participants each under a sheet, to determine whether Amin has penetrated her. Myriam calls it “torture.” She had been dragged by the hair away from Amin earlier. Male concern for Myriam is not only a pretext for fanning the flames of the interfamilial feud but also a ritual occasion to wield male power.
A while ago I likened the fabulous nature of Ermanno Olmi’s Legend of a Holy Drinker (1988) to that of Roberto Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful (1998), only to discover to my annoyance that in an Internet forum a pair of foolish, lackadaisical readers, apparently incapable of distinguishing between a categorical comparison and a comparison of the merit of two works, the latter of which I neither made nor implied, nevertheless balked at “my” idea that Benigni’s modestly accomplished film is as good as Olmi’s brilliant one. It always annoys me when someone attributes to me something I never wrote, especially when I have taken care to write precisely what I mean, as I did in the Olmi-Benigni case, where I note that both works are best understood as fables. This is by long way to warn careless readers, speed readers, superficial readers, whatever, not to extract from what I am about to say anything that has anything to do with the relative quality of the two works I am about to compare on an entirely different basis; but Chouikh’s film inhabits a largely mythical and parabolic domain, as does Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Medea (1969). Chouikh approaches the Shakespeare in much the same way as Pasolini approaches the Euripedes. To beat a deadbeat reader, let me gratuitously add that Chouikh does not succeed in this endeavor as brilliantly as Pasolini. Nevertheless, he succeeds very, very, very well.
What Chouikh manages to do is collapse the difference between ancient and current regional violence, to show their similarity and connectedness. At the beginning of this entry I list other film versions of Shakespeare’s play, two of which are academic or for the purpose of studio prestige, and the other three of which are sentimental and audience-manipulative. Chouikh’s film, by contrast, is what art ought to be: analytical.
The final battle that ends in such horrific bloodshed happens offscreen; Myriam and Amin survey the result—a plentitude of corpses strewn in the sand—the following morning. Call it Fordian or Brechtian—whatever; here also Chouikh has taken the best tack. Creating worthwhile art has much to do with making correct choices, decisions, whether sensibly or intuitively. Sometimes an artist gets lucky; Chouikh probably lacked the funds necessary to stage a vast onscreen battle.
Throughout, we have intermittently seen a young boy silently observe what is unfolding in his midst. At the end, finding his voice, he announces the reason for his departure for the unknown. He needs peace. He must find a place, away from madness, where children aren’t senselessly slaughtered. Some of us will realize only then that we haven’t heard him speak earlier; he is “talking back” to an elder, but what he is really doing is speaking up. He is speaking for himself; but, through his example, Chouikh is encouraging those who see his splendid, moving film not to let ancient quarrels control things and to speak up for peace.
Chouikh has given Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet a worthy cinematic home at last.
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THE DESERT ARK (Mohamed Chouikh, 1997)
I have never found much merit in any film version of Romeo and Juliet that I’ve seen: not George Cukor’s (1936), not Renato Castellani’s (1954), which took the Golden Lion of St. Mark at Venice, not Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise’s (West Side Story, 1961), not Franco Zeffirelli’s (1968), not Baz Luhrmann’s (1996). Would I have better luck with an Arabic version in the Algerian desert?
While lame when attending to its “Romeo” and “Juliet,” here, Amin and Myriam, Mohamed Chouikh’s L’arche du désert, from Algeria, France, Switzerland and Germany, is strong, fierce, engrossing, visually stunning. Chouikh and color cinematographer Mustafa Ben Mihoub (best cinematography, Ouagadougou Panafrican Film and Television Festival) have collaborated on a film that absorbs and relocates its Shakespearean material, not only to the Algerian setting but to the bowels of its own culture and experience, and connects with Shakespeare’s principal concern, not sappy puppy love but violence. This version ends in a bloodbath that, stingingly, is more reminiscent of Hamlet than of Shakespeare’s earlier traged;y.
The cannot-quite-be-lovers here are of absolutely no interest. We have here a Romeo and Juliet without either a Romeo or a Juliet of any substance. The feud between their families is everything, and the young pair exist only to exacerbate this feud so that the very existence of “the city”—this is the English translation that the DVD provides—is imperiled by the feud. (Amin’s forced “exile” is, surprisingly, not so far; Amin leaves his house for a place still within the city’s limits.) In the watching, because of our expectations, we are likely to consider this a flaw; but the insubstantiality of Myriam and Amin underscores the monstrous arbitrariness of the feud. The warring families seize upon a tryst between the two children in order to self-righteously inflame themselves and thus justify to themselves their uncivil behavior. Chouikh’s “flaw,” then, helps accurately analyze a situation of social and political violence.
An especially remarkable passage indicates the male inspection that Myriam must undergo, with both participants each under a sheet, to determine whether Amin has penetrated her. Myriam calls it “torture.” She had been dragged by the hair away from Amin earlier. Male concern for Myriam is not only a pretext for fanning the flames of the interfamilial feud but also a ritual occasion to wield male power.
A while ago I likened the fabulous nature of Ermanno Olmi’s Legend of a Holy Drinker (1988) to that of Roberto Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful (1998), only to discover to my annoyance that in an Internet forum a pair of foolish, lackadaisical readers, apparently incapable of distinguishing between a categorical comparison and a comparison of the merit of two works, the latter of which I neither made nor implied, nevertheless balked at “my” idea that Benigni’s modestly accomplished film is as good as Olmi’s brilliant one. It always annoys me when someone attributes to me something I never wrote, especially when I have taken care to write precisely what I mean, as I did in the Olmi-Benigni case, where I note that both works are best understood as fables. This is by long way to warn careless readers, speed readers, superficial readers, whatever, not to extract from what I am about to say anything that has anything to do with the relative quality of the two works I am about to compare on an entirely different basis; but Chouikh’s film inhabits a largely mythical and parabolic domain, as does Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Medea (1969). Chouikh approaches the Shakespeare in much the same way as Pasolini approaches the Euripedes. To beat a deadbeat reader, let me gratuitously add that Chouikh does not succeed in this endeavor as brilliantly as Pasolini. Nevertheless, he succeeds very, very, very well.
What Chouikh manages to do is collapse the difference between ancient and current regional violence, to show their similarity and connectedness. At the beginning of this entry I list other film versions of Shakespeare’s play, two of which are academic or for the purpose of studio prestige, and the other three of which are sentimental and audience-manipulative. Chouikh’s film, by contrast, is what art ought to be: analytical.
The final battle that ends in such horrific bloodshed happens offscreen; Myriam and Amin survey the result—a plentitude of corpses strewn in the sand—the following morning. Call it Fordian or Brechtian—whatever; here also Chouikh has taken the best tack. Creating worthwhile art has much to do with making correct choices, decisions, whether sensibly or intuitively. Sometimes an artist gets lucky; Chouikh probably lacked the funds necessary to stage a vast onscreen battle.
Throughout, we have intermittently seen a young boy silently observe what is unfolding in his midst. At the end, finding his voice, he announces the reason for his departure for the unknown. He needs peace. He must find a place, away from madness, where children aren’t senselessly slaughtered. Some of us will realize only then that we haven’t heard him speak earlier; he is “talking back” to an elder, but what he is really doing is speaking up. He is speaking for himself; but, through his example, Chouikh is encouraging those who see his splendid, moving film not to let ancient quarrels control things and to speak up for peace.
Chouikh has given Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet a worthy cinematic home at last.
Like this:
This entry was posted on June 25, 2009 at 8:20 am and is filed under Informal Capsule Film Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.