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Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
| anyone seen this? |
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| salaampeaceshalom |
| 10/07/05 at 08:37:15 |
| [slm], I was wondering if anyone has watched this, as it sounds quite interesting, and would just like to know what others thought when they saw it: The long and winding road Curfews, arrests, wars - even suicide. The first film ever to be shot inside Mecca's holiest shrines had a tougher path to the screen than most. Maya Jaggi reports Friday October 7, 2005 The Guardian The annual hajj to Mecca, when 2 million pilgrims converge on Islam's holiest shrine, has been captured in documentaries. But no feature film had been allowed to film in the sacred Saudi city until French director Ismaël Ferroukhi shot his debut feature, Le Grand Voyage. "No one looked at the camera," he says in amazement. "People didn't even seem to see the crew - they're in another world." Ferroukhi, 43, wanted to tell the story of a father and son who "live under the same roof but don't speak the same language, or know each other", a story that in spirit mirrors his own. As a child growing up in Crest, a village in the south of France to which his parents had migrated from Morocco when he was three, he had been captivated by his own father's pilgrimage to Mecca by car. In Ferroukhi's road movie, Reda is torn from school in southern France just before final exams, and from his girlfriend Lisa, to drive his ageing and autocratic father on the hajj. But as their sky-blue estate car (with an odd orange door) crosses 10 countries - through Bulgarian snows and Syrian desert - the two are forced to reckon with each other. "I thought if I could lock up two characters for 3,000 miles, they'd have to communicate," Ferroukhi says. The father cruelly bins Reda's mobile phone, and this marks the forced opening of dialogue. Sullen resentment turns to respect and, ultimately, love. Released in France last year, Le Grand Voyage played in cinemas for six months simply on word of mouth. It won the 2004 Luigi de Laurentiis award at Venice, and went to film festivals from Belgium to Argentina. More than 4,000 people watched it on a giant screen in Marrakech's Djemaa el Fna square, with "tourists and everybody, some who had never been in a cinema, mixing in the crowd". The director, whose own looks would lend themselves to a Bollywood hero, now lives in Paris. He made his first short film only in his 30s, using people from his village. He wrote his second, L'Inconnu (1996), for Catherine Deneuve, who admired the script in a TV scheme to team young directors with screen stars. Gamely splicing English with French, he says he wrote the screenplay for Le Grand Voyage in 1998, and it took five years, with the aid of producer Humbert Balsan, to secure less than a third of the target budget. Yet with only 1m euros (about £700,000), "one Super 16 camera and no lights", he sought permission to shoot the final scenes in Mecca. "I thought, if I can shoot in Mecca, I do the movie; if I can't, I don't." He sent the script to the Saudi ambassador in Paris, who secured visas for a crew of four - all of whom had to be Muslim. But on arrival, "they said the authorisation was no good. Mecca is like the Vatican." The five-day hajj was already under way. "For three days we waited, then they gave us a permit to shoot a long way from the great mosque. Little by little, I came nearer." He spliced these shots with scenes later filmed with the actors in Morocco. He also shot hard-to-get footage from above of white-clad pilgrims thronging the inner terraces of the mosque. "They gave me a bad place on a hotel roof, with an air conditioner," he recalls. "I found a tiny angle - there was no margin at all." Filming the journey proved as uncertain. They hit a curfew in Serbia in 2003 after the prime minister was assassinated ("we were arrested several times"). The Iraq war broke out as they crossed into Turkey. "It was difficult. For me, all war is criminal. But, though it's selfish, I tried to focus only on the movie," which he wanted to be "timeless - only about everyday life". He became as single-minded as a hajji. Just as Reda yearns to linger in Milan while his father snaps, "we're not tourists", the crew "kept pointing out beautiful scenes, but I only cared about what the characters were feeling. I changed nothing. The script was very subtle, so you can't improvise." The dialogue in Le Grand Voyage is notable for its gaps. The father will speak only Maghrebi Arabic, while Reda replies stubbornly in French. "There are differences between generations everywhere in the world," says Ferroukhi, "but when you live in another country, the gap widens." It becomes a film about language and communication across gulfs of faith, culture and generation, between migrant and second-generation beurs, orthodox and non-believer. "I was trying to make silence eloquent, because the deepest things are conveyed without words," Ferroukhi says. He was aided by compelling performances from Nicolas Cazalé, a French actor of Algerian descent with the brooding charm and vulnerability of a young Brando, and veteran Moroccan actor Mohamed Majd, who comes volubly into his own in the Middle East. While there are many comic moments, the moving climax in Mecca is crucial to Reda's understanding of his father's beliefs, and of his own connection to a succouring and humanist global faith. Ferroukhi, who describes himself as culturally Muslim, sees the film as about spirituality rather than religion; "about what's behind appearances, and how to break down barriers". But he also sought to "rehumanise a community smeared by an extreme minority using religion for political ends". At an interfaith screening in London, organised by the St Ethelberger's Centre for Reconciliation and Peace, he was asked if he anticipated hostility from conservative Muslims, a question that a self-professed "conservative imam" in the audience found bewildering, since he was delighted by the film. It shows a range of devout and secular Muslims, but no violent Islamists. "I wanted to show what I know of Islam," says Ferroukhi. The media "speak of 1 per cent of sick people as if they represent all Muslims, which is humiliating for the rest." It is also "dangerous for the youth who don't trust or listen to their parents, and can identify Islam with those images of death". While tensions persist in France over the ban on headscarves in schools ("I'm against the stupid law"), and Turkey's prospective EU membership, Ferroukhi insists: "Islam is already in Europe. It needs to be accepted for what it is. Turkey belongs to Europe, like it or not. It's a bridge to Asia and other cultures, and without bridges there's no dialogue." For him, the film became a mission. "I gave up everything to make it - except what really mattered." The sacrifice was compounded when the producer, Balsan, committed suicide in February, according to Ferroukhi, in despair at debts. The director is fighting on to have the film released in Arab countries, where it has been seen only at festivals. "Everywhere in the world, people say, 'It's my story - I had the same thing with my father.' It's a great compliment." He says he was moved by a screening at a prison near Lille, where most inmates are of north African descent - many, Ferroukhi argues, unfairly inside for trivial offences. "Some turn to religion in prison because it's their last resource." Yet in the discussion afterwards, inmates opened up about their families out of trust for the director. "I'm self-taught - that's my strength and my weakness," he says. "My influence is my culture, origin, and my life in France. I try to look inside myself." |
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