European Films

This review contains minor spoilers.

In a simple Danish kitchen, a widowed Sunni man (Munir Shargawi) whips up simple yet savoury Middle Eastern dishes as he has a tense conversation with his adult son Jamil (newcomer Dar Salim), who is himself the father of a young boy (Elias Samir Al-Sobehi). They talk about the old man’s cowardice and why he has never sought vengeance for his wife’s brutal murder by the gang of a Shi‘ite man (Khalid Alssubeihi) who also lives in the neighbourhood. At first it seems that the son might have the upper hand, but then, in a perfectly written and directed sequence of events, a pork sausage is used by the father as an instrument of reason, setting in motion a chain of events at once logical and inevitable.

Before this scene, about half an hour into the film, Shargawi struggles somewhat to set up all the characters and events necessary for his story (there are more murders, including of Jamil’s friend Omar, played by the director himself). Once all the pieces fall into place, however, the film’s momentum snowballs to its harrowing conclusion with barely a second to waste, even if Shargawi is not only interested in violence but also has an eye for calm-before-the-storm moments and some intelligent off-camera narrative. The film's treatment of its subject is certainly more intelligent than other recent Scandinavian films struggling with similar subject matter, including När mörkret faller (When Darkness Falls) and 1:1.

The work of co-scriptwriter Mogens Rukov, who also co-authored the first dogme film Festen amongst others, must have been an important contributing factor, because even though the film is mostly spoken in Arabic (often punctuated by English ‘fucks’ and ‘fuckings’) it certainly feels Danish. Cinematography by Aske Alexander Foss, mostly handheld and with heavily saturated colours, also contributes to its Dogme feeling, as do the film’s raw, natural performances from a cast of mostly unknowns. Khalid Alssubeihi, who also co-starred in 1:1, is a standout as the Shi‘ite man, while Hassan El Sayed as one of his hoodlums is the spitting image of El Hedi ben Salem, Fassbinder’s leading man in Angst essen Seele auf (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul).

The film is not a dogme film pur sang, and one of its most note-worthy divergences is its Arabic language soundtrack and Middle Eastern-flavoured score. The conversations with Jamil’s young son Adam are in Danish, however, even though Jamil is married to Yasmina (Amira Helene Larsen), also a second-generation immigrant, suggesting that ancient feuds might have been brought from their homelands but integration is not really a problem.

In a telling scene, one of the men says it is a well-known fact that Sunnis and Shi‘ites hate each other more than Israelis and Palestinians, to which one of his companions replies rather succinctly (but not without a note of weary acceptance of ancient traditions): “You need some pussy”. If only that was all that was needed for world peace.

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