Shadows Of Beirut

Bluesky

It is impossible to tell a story about the Lebanese capital set in the past six years without making reference to the evening of 4 August 2020, when 2,750 tonnes of confiscated ammonium nitrate which had been left in a warehouse and ignored for six years suddenly caught fire, resulting in the third largest non-nuclear artificial explosion in history. Tina Gharavi’s Shadows Of Beirut gets it out of the way right at the start by featuring the blast itself, the shock as it tore apart the city. It’s an appropriate introduction for a film about culture shock, about the intersection of the familiar and the alien, as Englishwoman Lana (played by writer Tala Calil, who drew on aspects of her own story to create this one) travels to the city where she grew up for one last chance to reconcile with her father before he dies.

2020 was, of course, also the year of Covid lockdowns. In Lebanon, the disease was largely dismissed as “just a ‘flu,” creating another cultural difference which has a big impact on the traveller. She seems to be perpetually struggling to breathe, hiding behind a mask which may help to manage her disease risk but is no help at all with her panic attacks. Her cousin Rami (Assaad Bouab) presses her to remove it, and, in a film which barely acknowledges religion, it becomes a means of talking about faith. Lana’s father is an alcoholic. She experiences flashbacks to a childhood full of violence. The pressure is so great that she doesn’t know how to tell her partner, Ben (Michael E Rodgers) why she has gone there, making up a story about an uncle. Rami understands, and although they don’t discuss the violence either, he serves as an anchor for her, even if aspects of his own life are messier than he would like.

“I look at my hands and I see his...I hate it,” says Lana, but she also recognises a need for closure. Trying to summon up the courage to confront him, she instead encounters a stranger, Sirine (Flavia Bechara), with whom she experiences a strange connection. The two of them travel through the city together, and the claustrophobia earlier evoked by the sound design, framing choices and lighting gradually gives way, allowing Lana to notice her surroundings in new ways. Gharavi’s portrait of Beirut is very particular in its details, which will charm newcomers and delight those who already know it. In a ruined building, men huddled round a fire offer her biscuits and ask her for advice about BitCoin. Joyful songs and songs full of melancholy longing mingle in the air.

The sound design here is magnificent. In one scene, Rami takes Lana to a club and we hear the music built up layer by layer as she gives way to it. Elsewhere, ambient sound subtly ebbs and flows with her mood, and the noises made certain objects gradually soften as they become more familiar. Beirut is reasserting its hold on Lana, claiming her as one of its own. In escaping her father, she has isolated herself – helped by moving to a country where separateness is much more the norm – and her initial struggle against the embrace of city and kin gradually relents. In the process, she undergoes her own transformation – not, entirely, into something new. It is more as if she is coming back to herself, but this time around she has room to feel good about that.

As Lebanon suffers now under Israeli bombs, this film is a tribute to its spirit and an assurance that no matter what is destroyed, its spirit it such that it will find a way back. It is a wounded place, but a place full of warmth, and nothing can keep that down for long.

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