Thursday, 29 May 2014

All that's left is a bitter taste of a life that was once so promising.


Ahlaam
Mohamed Al Daradji 2006 Iraq
Starring: Aseel Adil, Bashir Al Majid, Mohamed Hashim, Talib Al-Furati, Azhaar Mamoodi, Kaheel Khalid



One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest aside, films based around psychiatric units are traditionally not a barrel of laughs, not that they should be - there's a limited number of ways such a film could entertain before becoming reductive and monstrously offensive and a drama in such settings perhaps has licence to be bleak. Kicking off with a person doing their make up by the blinking lights of sirens though Mohamed Al Daradji's Ahlaam may be the grimmest of all the works of the genre. In fact the closest thing to happy moments are the romantic wedding of the title character (at least until it's interrupted by soldiers who kidnap the groom and shoot a guest) and when said character doesn't jump off a building. This institution is in Iraq in the dying days of Saddam Hussein's reign and I use the word 'institution' apprehensively as in fact the building is little more than a prison, the 'treatment' doesn't rise above electroconvulsive therapy and general abuse and within minutes it's blown to ruins by falling bombs. Pretty quickly we flash back five years to a time that initially appears happier with children playing and men joining in with their skipping games as if we've stumbled suddenly into a yoghurt advert but as ever dark undercurrents are present, this time in the form of coffins being paraded through the streets. We're then given an introduction to the three leads glimpsed in the opening scenes; Ali, a soldier whose shell-shocked attempt to carry his injured comrade to safety and subsequent post-traumatic stress are mistaken for an attempt at desertion and whose ear is medically removed (without anaesthetic) as a court-ordered punishment; Mehdi, a student forced into the army who later becomes seemingly the only kind, well-meaning doctor in the hospital and Ahlaam (Mesopotamian Arabic for dreams), the bereft newlywed destroyed by the events of her nuptials. At first it's difficult to understand why the film carries her name as more time is spent with the other characters, particularly Ali and his friend Hasan, and hers is the most unrealised role, one which, in truth, doesn't go much further than that of a clichéd hysteric, but soon it's revealed that living amongst bloodshed and horror as they do all that the three have left are dreams - albeit those of a trapped past. Naturally the 1998 scenes bear a serious sense of foreboding, mainly because we know how things are going to turn out, and they work well in places, especially in those hitting us with Hasan's childishness and lack of readiness for battle, but frankly they're often more than a little dull. Thankfully when Al Daradji returns to the crumbling asylum things improve with the images taking on a fittingly nightmarish, hallucinatory pallor as Ahlaam wanders the city in search of her missing husband, in the end almost transcending humanity entirely and becoming a symbol of the wrongs of Hussein's regime. Obviously war hangs heavy over the proceedings but surprisingly the film is at its best when it leaves the battlefield to explore those affected by the hostilities and operate as an anti-war work full of paranoia and unrelenting terror. Perhaps the most disturbing details however are that the narrative is based on a true story (although it isn't always believable) and that, for the first film made in the country after Hussein's fall, the hope for a better existence that may be expected is in fact notable by its absence, Al Daradji instead still needing to investigate and come to terms with the remnants of his own and his countrymen's collective past.

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