EVERYDAY
MAGIC
by Howard
Schumann
A
blend of the unique and the familiar, Caramel,
Lebanon's official Academy Award submission for Best Foreign Film of
2007, is a bittersweet comedy set in Beirut, Lebanon, a city on the
road to recovery from a civil war. The familiar part is that, like Barbershop,
the film takes place in a beauty salon, in this case named Si Belle,
where a group of women work and congregate as they deal with problems
of thwarted romance, marriage, aging, and sexuality. The unique part
is that these personal stories occur in a city where religious and political
conflict is never too far from the surface, though there is no mention
of Israelis or Palestinians. The title by the way has nothing to do
with very sweet chewy candy but refers to a sticky concoction used by
the hairdressers to rip out unwanted facial hair. Ouch!
The cast consists
of excellent non-professional actors, including the director and co-writer
Nadine Labaki who plays Layale, a single, 30-year old salon owner who
happens to be Christian. Layale is involved in an affair with a happily
married man and ignores the romantic overtures of a handsome traffic
cop who openly flirts with her while giving her parking tickets. Her
best friend is co-worker Nisrine (Yasmine Al Masri), a Muslim who, in
a state of panic that her future husband will discover that she is not
a virgin, goes to a plastic surgeon to attempt to fix the problem.
Other offbeat
characters are Aunt Rose (Sihame Haddad), a sweet old seamstress who
lives with her slightly demented sister (Aziza Semaan), and Jamale (Gisèle
Aouad), an aging actress who goes through mechanical auditions for commercials
but senses that her best days are behind her. Rima (Joanna Moukarzel)
is attracted to a beautiful long-haired woman who comes to the shop
for shampoos but she is reluctant to openly express her feelings. Though
the salon environment is quite nurturing and the women are open about
expressing their feelings and desires, it is quite evident that they
operate under a society governed by traditional Islamic law. Layale
learns that you cannot book a hotel room unless you can prove that you
are either married or a prostitute, and a couple is harassed by a policeman
merely for sitting in their car and talking.
While Caramel
might have veered into soap opera under less capable hands, the director
carefully avoids the Hollywood treatment. She has created strong-minded
women who have built the kind of community in which they can turn to
each other for mutual support. Dedicating her humorous, quietly engaging
film “to my Beirut,” Labaki has woven a tapestry of the
fading beauty of the ancient city, old traditions being confronted by
the new, and the discovery of the bonds between people that make relationships
worth celebrating.
Kirsten
Sheridan’s August Rush is an example
of the genre known as magical realism and is best viewed as an inspired
fable. Though there is precious little realism, the combination of exuberant
music, the outstanding performance of Freddie Highmore, plus solid supporting
stints by Keri Russell, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Terence Howard make
August Rush a very enjoyable and often moving experience in
spite of its logical disconnects.
Bullied
by older boys in an orphanage, Evan Taylor (Highmore) is an eleven-year
old who believes that his parents are still alive and that he can reach
out to them through the power of music. In flashback we find out that
Evan’s parents, cellist Lyla Novacek (Russell) and Irish rock
singer Louis Connelly (Rhys Meyers) met in Greenwich Village and had
a meeting of the minds and bodies together on a rooftop while trying
to escape from a boring party. Their relationship is thwarted, however,
by Lyla’s stern father (William Sadler) who, after the pregnant
Lyla is hit by a car and gives birth prematurely, tells her that her
baby has died. Unaware that the boy is still alive and has been sent
to an orphanage by her father, Lyla and Louis abandon their careers.
Lyla moves to Chicago to become a music teacher and Louis becomes a
businessman in San Francisco. We pick up on their lives eleven years
later (neither seems to have aged in the process).
Unwilling
to be placed with a foster family, Evan runs away from the orphanage
and becomes involved with a group of street musicians in Washington
Square Park. In the scenes in Greenwich Village, director Kristen Sheridan
has given us a lovely vision of New York reminiscent of her father Jim
Sheridan’s film In America, and also of Steven Zaillian’s
Searching for Bobby Fischer. It is here that Evan discovers
that he has natural musical ability as he picks up a guitar and entertains
the gathering crowd for a sizable payday. Asking another young busker
for a place to stay, he is routed to an abandoned theater where, in
the tradition of Oliver Twist, he meets other musicians who are sent
out on the street to play for money by an overbearing Fagin-like Robin
Williams whom they call the Wizard.
When you
think the string of unlikely events has reached its limits, Evan, now
called August Rush, finds a church choir of angelic magnitude where
a pastor with connections sends him to the Julliard School of Music
and a concert in Central Park playing music that he has composed. While
events stretch our credulity, August Rush at its core is not
about the story but about possibility. With its theme of tuning in to
the world around us and opening ourselves to its music, it may just
be the first film that anticipates a world consciousness not governed
by logic but by creativity and spiritual connection
©2008 Howard Schumann
CineScene
