Film: Son Of Babylon
Release date: 11th April 2011
Certificate: 12
Running time: 90 mins
Director: Mohamed Al-Daradji
Starring: Shazada Hussein, Yasser Talib
Genre: Drama
Studio: Dogwoof
Format: Cinema
Country: Iraq/UK/France/Netherlands/United Arab Emirates/Egypt/Palestine
Already half forgotten from the world’s mind as other atrocities, tyrannies, wars and disasters play on, Son Of Babylon is released in the UK eight years from the fall of Saddam Hussein and the extent of his legacy revealed. However, instead of the temptation to deliver a political/historical commentary, Al Daradji presents a very emotional exploit embarked upon by a grandmother and her grandson.
Three weeks after the fall of Saddam Hussein, Um-Ibrahim (Shehzad Hussen) sets out with her grandson, Ahmed (Yassir Taleeb), from northern Iraq in search of Ibrahim, respective son and father.
The film opens on a hot, windy desert as the two travellers follow a seemingly endless road to nowhere. Just as young Ahmed throws a tantrum and threatens to turn back for home, a truck comes along with a somewhat belligerent driver who agrees to take them to Baghdad for a large sum of money.
When they get there, the truck driver’s empathy for the two makes him return all the money and the recurrent theme of the kindness of strangers established. While they wait for a bus, Um-Ibrahim makes Ahmed read a letter from someone in the army which says how, after saving this man’s life, Ibrahim got sent to Nasiriyah prison. After a bus ride to Nasiriyah, they manage to find the prison, but find that Ibrahim is not on any of the lists. They are told to start searching the mass graves currently being uncovered in the desert.
Along the way, they meet a man called Musa (Bashir al-Majid), who turns out to be an ex member of Saddam’s Republican Guard, and who was forced to murder men, women and children while in service. After initial rejection from Um-Ibrahim, and out of guilt and good will, Musa helps grandmother and grandson search for Ibrahim’s body, but to no avail, and the two are left to endlessly search the sandy graves in the hope of discovering something that remains of Ibrahim…
By all accounts, the storyline is a bit thin. While there are western films and TV dramas galore which revel in middle-eastern political coups, desert warfare, army conflict and its effects in the West, when it comes to a film made in Iraq about the Iraqi people and by an Iraqi Dutch filmmaker, a story about an old lady and her young grandson is perhaps one of the last things to be expected. But Al Daradji succeeds in making a poignant account of what the years of oppressive dictatorship rule did to a whole people - more than one million of whom went missing or died, ending up in the astounding number of 300 mass graves.
In Son Of Babylon, religious and political animosity are pushed to the background in the name of tender humanity displayed by nearly every stranger across the races - Kurdish and Arab - and enforced none so much as in the scene where Um-Ibrahim forgives Musa. In fact, it comes as a surprise to learn that the two lead actors of the film are amateurs, unlikely to have ever even seen a film before. They nevertheless manage to incur raw and honest presentations of human experience, perhaps due to the actors’ own experiences during those times of suffering – authenticity certainly pays off in their performances.
The film is almost purely elemental in its representations of hope and death, something which is mirrored in the cinematography. It is as if the film could be set in the land of limbo; nothing is static, the people are always moving, and the buildings are never complete. It is such a land that Al Daradji films, where the surroundings echo the emptiness of its people who are always on a journey, searching for lost ones.
The use of subtle metaphor is a nifty technique when approaching sensitive subject matter, adding a poetic and philosophical slant on what could otherwise be quite brazen material. For instance, the only time Ahmed comes close to finding his father is when he drives past the gate to the gardens of Babylon - a little bit of heaven in the desolate, windy planes of the dusty desert saturated in skeletal remains.
By using the sensitive relationship of Um-Ibrahim and Ahmed, an audience can be drawn in to the film material emotionally and at least witness some of the pain endured by innocent Iraqi people. It is unclear if the film is trying to send a message. However, it is a recount of something which must not be forgotten as a part of Iraqi history (something supported by the Iraqi Prime Minister himself in a DVD extra).
This film isn't a film for everyone. It hankers after the sympathetic conscience in all of us and succeeds with flying colours. One message of sorts Son Of Babylon sends out in to the world is how resounding and reflective national cinema can be. It is a simple film, but manages to illustrate the hardships endured by those left behind so effectively that it makes one wonder of how much suffering came to happen in the first place. MI
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