Review by obilivion
By: obilivion
What I want to say is halfway, all expressions of ethnicity, society, religion, family, friends, eroticism are halfway.
However, the image in the sea is beautiful and the camera and the cut are good.
To focus on this work, the two dances sh...
Read More
What I want to say is halfway, all expressions of ethnicity, society, religion, family, friends, eroticism are halfway.
However, the image in the sea is beautiful and the camera and the cut are good.
To focus on this work, the two dances should be naked.
Review by gayforplay
By: gayforplay
I don't know quite what to make of this film. Yes, I would categorize it as an "Art House" film: it is laden with both literal and figurative images that transport us both to the physical setting of Beirut and to the spiritual world just beneath th...
Read More
I don't know quite what to make of this film. Yes, I would categorize it as an "Art House" film: it is laden with both literal and figurative images that transport us both to the physical setting of Beirut and to the spiritual world just beneath the surface, as in its artful scenes of bodies suspended underwater. I do not think that it is entirely accurate to list the film here as having Gay Interest and Male Sex Scenes, or even Romance. Our protagonists are a close-knit band of young men going about their lives in a society where physical comradery may be quite acceptable, but a sexualizing of that behavior would not be. The film is not very good at telling a straightforward story; it is more of an atmospheric rendering, giving us a good sense of its Beirut locale. There is a very effective scene of a crowd of people moving the main character's dead body, and later a moving scene of the ritual washing of the body. These realistic scenes are paired with several "artistic" scenes of bodies underwater, and of a dance between the friends (lovers?). The film does an inadequate job of explaining what makes Hassane a martyr, and it seems that that was the filmmaker's main point, no?
Review by Marty
By: Marty
Straight men walking arm in arm throughout the Middle East is shocking to Western, Puritanical eyes. While this film hints at a relationship possibly deeper than traditional male friendship, it offers nothing overt. What the film DOES offer is a st...
Read More
Straight men walking arm in arm throughout the Middle East is shocking to Western, Puritanical eyes. While this film hints at a relationship possibly deeper than traditional male friendship, it offers nothing overt. What the film DOES offer is a strikingly handsome cast of young men who are charged with washing the body of their recently deceased friend and preparing it for burial.
Review by finch
By: finch
poor angry young man whines about his life.
his parents worry.
angry young man just wants to hang out with friends & not work.
angry young man attempts pointless stunt , fails & dies.
his parents lament, moan & whine.
dead ma...
Read More
poor angry young man whines about his life.
his parents worry.
angry young man just wants to hang out with friends & not work.
angry young man attempts pointless stunt , fails & dies.
his parents lament, moan & whine.
dead man is bathed.
end.
pretentious , self-indulgent "art crap" images of water relentlessly shown.
left with wondering how these "films" are made?
thrown out.
embarrassed by how stupid & uneccessary this was.
ew.
Review by Amos Lassen
By: Amos Lassen
"Martyr"
Marginalization and Hopelessness
Amos Lassen
Hassane (Hamsa Mekdad) is a young man from an impoverished neighborhood who feels that his life has stopped making sense. All he has left is a close group of friends who are brought...
Read More
"Martyr"
Marginalization and Hopelessness
Amos Lassen
Hassane (Hamsa Mekdad) is a young man from an impoverished neighborhood who feels that his life has stopped making sense. All he has left is a close group of friends who are brought together by a shared sense of marginalization and hopelessness. Hassane's strange drowning at Beirut's rocky shore brings on a mob procession and strips apart the bond of youth and friendship. His friends grapple with loss and powerlessness.
Aesthetics are important in Mazen Khaled's "Martyr" where are taken on a tour of the human body, as his camera lingers over the statue-like naked form of central protagonist Hassane. We see him head to the Beirut beach with his friends, where the day will take an unexpected turn. In terms of plot and characterization, there's not much to go on here, beyond the general sensation that these young men, like so many in virtually any country are suffering from a sense of disenfranchisement and marginalization. There is also an exploration of the homoerotic elements of this almost exclusively male space but though we look at their physical interaction, their emotional world remains largely closed to us.
While the look of Khaled's film is distinctive and features the blues of the water or brightness of the summer's day but the themes could be better-developed. We learn that the term "martyr" means something very different in the Islamic world to the narrow definition employed by the West.
We get to see every inch of Hassane's skin without ever truly being able to get beneath it. Khaled has a visual flare but is let down by a focus that is so intellectual that it fails to fully deal with its characters' humanity.
Islam counts death by drowning as a form of martyrdom and this is hinted at in the film's opening: lyrical imagery of the protagonist Hamad facing the camera, flexing his fingers, and finally floating underwater. The camera probes the textures and edges of his body, both in an abstract space and in the rippling water. Hamad wakes up, suggesting that this has been only a dream but as more of a prologue, giving us a preview of both the film's method.
Hassane is a twenty-something year old disenchanted with his life; he has no job, a rocky relationship with his parents as a result and only finds refuge at the rocky corniche in Beirut with his three friends: sensitive Ali, the considerably masculine Ayman and Muhammad, his confidant who is suggested to be something more through casual touches that the camera takes great pleasure in focusing on. But one's friends can only distract one so much until reality sets in; Hassane makes a risky jump into the ocean - whether purposefully or not is ambiguous - and drowns, leaving his friends and family with the aftermath of his death.
The film plays with the idea of the infamous 'male gaze: the focus on goosebumpy flesh, shampoo bubbles trailing down a back, even a casual shot of Hassane fondling his penis in the shower suggests eroticism by nature.
We follow a straightforward story that takes place over the course of a day, time melting away when Hassane passes, exploring the reactions to the death of a well-loved man. The fusing of the narrative and Khaled's signature admiration for the body is exemplified when Hassane's friends - who are then joined by a larger group of men eager to help - use their bodies as bridges to roll his body across jagged rocks and upwards towards the safety of the smooth pavements. There's nothing perverse about it, this is simply a means to an end.
One scene is the somber car ride back to Hassane's family: Hassane is laid across the wide-eyed Ayman and Muhammad, who cannot communicate his pain in any other way than slamming the poor driver's seat. Ali, in the front, tries to guide the driver but keeps turning around to touch Hassane's arm out of shock and perhaps habit. In such a simple set-up, every character shows their unwavering love for Hassane, a brotherhood that retains its strength even through death.
The film has elements of the experimental, featuring 'dances' between Hassane and Muhammad - a moment that allows Muhammad to be more explicit in his care for his friend - and Hassane's mother (Carol Abboud) who performs a piece influenced by rural Lebanese chants and movements, beating her chest, stomach and genitals to signify where the pain is. This is quite jarring as they take us out the traditional narrative, and towards the end of the film there are certainly moments where I wanted to see more of Hassane's friends and where they go from here.
This is something of a study of homosocial behaviors. It is not about gay men - even if there is an undeniable element of a relationship deeper than just friendship - but looking at how men interact, exploring the male form from an angle that personifies the male gaze
The homosocial becomes, in death, homoerotic in the way we see the preparation of the body, and abstract images on a theatre stage, where figures we've seen reenact their roles. Time continues to shift, as images of sun, water, and bodies in space get replayed and reshuffled. Perhaps most vivid is the way that the friends' patiently wash of Hassane's corpse.
"Martyr" is an excellent example of how film form and style reshape the physical realm to create a visual poetry. Thematically, Khaled wanted to treat this seemingly sorrowful event as a kind of liberation from a life of hopelessness and strife: suspended in water, Hamad seems finally free. This is also a film that will polarize every audience in that it is more homo-suggestive than homoerotic, more closeted than an in-your-face homosexual, this is a life where the simplest of actions [a touch, a look, a proximity] speak louder than the loudest words, where reverence and respect are uttered with every greeting and farewell.