I've been skimming through the reviews posted about this film, and I was surprised to see that they are mostly positive reviews. I found this weird at first, especially since most of the people I discussed the film with within my circle of friends and colleagues didn't really like it. But then I thought the contrary, this is normal since essentially this kind of film is very easily likable.
When I watched the movie I felt a lot of things, it definitely did stir up a lot of emotions in me while watching; there were tears, laughs, enjoyable music, and the acting was not bad. But as the film closed I was left with a blank face... the bad blank face not the good one.
If I were to describe this film in one word, I would say that it is a collage- a pure collage of everything; styles, genres, stories, acting, music. There is everything in it, but I'm not sure if this is necessarily good. I felt at the end that Nadine Labaki had a lot to say and wanted to say them all at the same time. I do not blame her, since making cinema in this part of the world is very difficult, a filmmaker feels that he/she has a lot to say in so few ways.
But the essential problem for me in this film was the topic; the epic Christian-Muslim battle in Lebanese culture. Seriously, is this the biggest problem in Lebanon? Is this even the core of all problems? I seriously doubt that, rather I think it is the thing that the world would like to see about Lebanon; an exotic Kusturica-style village with the 'typical' Lebanese strife. For me the problem that we need to talk about is much bigger than that and goes down to the core of this whole nation's existence and the attitude of it's people. But again opinions differ as always.
And then there is Lysistrata, again another unconfessed adaptation mixed with unconfessed homages to directors, scenes, styles...
There is no doubt that Nadine Labake has surely been one of the pillars of globalizing Lebanese cinema, and that is a very good thing- the world now knows (more or less) that there is a country called Lebanon and it has tiny little filmmakers in it... but is this the Lebanon we live in? Does this struggle, this human emotion captured in "Where Do We Go Now?" echo the struggle we are living in this broken country?
When I watched the movie I felt a lot of things, it definitely did stir up a lot of emotions in me while watching; there were tears, laughs, enjoyable music, and the acting was not bad. But as the film closed I was left with a blank face... the bad blank face not the good one.
If I were to describe this film in one word, I would say that it is a collage- a pure collage of everything; styles, genres, stories, acting, music. There is everything in it, but I'm not sure if this is necessarily good. I felt at the end that Nadine Labaki had a lot to say and wanted to say them all at the same time. I do not blame her, since making cinema in this part of the world is very difficult, a filmmaker feels that he/she has a lot to say in so few ways.
But the essential problem for me in this film was the topic; the epic Christian-Muslim battle in Lebanese culture. Seriously, is this the biggest problem in Lebanon? Is this even the core of all problems? I seriously doubt that, rather I think it is the thing that the world would like to see about Lebanon; an exotic Kusturica-style village with the 'typical' Lebanese strife. For me the problem that we need to talk about is much bigger than that and goes down to the core of this whole nation's existence and the attitude of it's people. But again opinions differ as always.
And then there is Lysistrata, again another unconfessed adaptation mixed with unconfessed homages to directors, scenes, styles...
There is no doubt that Nadine Labake has surely been one of the pillars of globalizing Lebanese cinema, and that is a very good thing- the world now knows (more or less) that there is a country called Lebanon and it has tiny little filmmakers in it... but is this the Lebanon we live in? Does this struggle, this human emotion captured in "Where Do We Go Now?" echo the struggle we are living in this broken country?