 |
| The world outside my kitchen sink |
I’m having an existentialist crisis because last night I
experienced the art of Nicole Labaki. She is a Lebanese actress, screenwriter
and film director who in 2018 finished a 2-hour social-realist drama that will
shake your soul. At first the award winning Capernaum is hard to watch, but the filming of it is
so delightful that I hung in there. And I am so glad that I did. After the
credits went by, Michael and I sat in silence for many minutes unable to shake
our selves back to the present.
The main actor, a Syrian boy living in Norway, Zaid, is a kid of around
12 years old. His relationship with an Ethiopian baby (actually born of parents
from the east and west coast of the African continent) is so sweet and
poignant, and evolves to depict a pure and loving brotherhood. Both children
are desperate and Zaid is prone to inventive nurturing. The film has
a lot of silence, and the emotion in the faces of the children speaks the
situation.
Labaki says that the spark of the story came to her late one
night as she and her husband (who does the music for the film and agreed to mortgage
the house for production costs), were driving home and at a traffic stop. Out
the car window a woman was begging with her baby who was so tired he/she could
barely stand, yet even at midnight, could not be allowed to sleep. Labaki
wondered at the world of the child being limited to the square meter of
sidewalk. She was at the time pregnant with her second child and appalled at
the way the most vulnerable in our species were treated, at the extent of their maltreatment. For two years she
interviewed children in the slums of Lebanon, many of them refugees from
Euro-American wars. At the end of every interview she asked them if they were
glad to be alive. Most said “no”.
The story is about a kid who tries to save his younger
sister from being married off to pay the back rent. The sadness and
powerlessness of the situation envelops the movie viewer. Set in Beirut, the
story begins in court, where the young boy is trying to sue his parents for
having born him. When the judge asks Zaid what he wants from his parents, he says
that he wants them to stop having more kids. It is a poignant moment when we
pan to the parents who have at least 7 kids and are pregnant with another. From
there the story sweeps backwards and is in reality a story about papers,
documentation, identification cards and political borders. Without papers,
these families are desperate and invisible to all except those who mean to
exploit them.
I don’t want to tell you more. But since I experienced this
story I have not felt the same about my work or my life goals. Thoughts fly
through my head that I need to do something. Leave this bucolic country home I
just landed back in and go to the refugee camps, or at least to the US borders
where we lock up children and babies away from their parents. I could work in
the prisons in upstate NY with art supplies or do a diaper drive for the Red
Cross. Besides giving donations here and there like I always do, WHAT the hell
should I do? I feel undeservedly lucky being born American and with economic
options, but the stain of crimes done to others for the benefit of our national
lifestyle is going to be a longer sentence. It is string of unending moral
crimes.
No comments:
Post a Comment