The Insult (dir. Ziad Doueiri)

“What you said was unacceptable! That’s how wars start!”, so says a patriarch of one our protagonists, and his sentiments become the thesis of this spectacular Lebanese drama, "The Insult". Chosen as the official entry by Lebanon to the Best Foreign Language Award at the forthcoming oscars, two ordinary men from contrasting backgrounds ignite a national debate long repressed into the social consciousness. Best described as a part social satire and part allegorical fable, this neatly woven character study has so much to admire in a deftly handled drama that even though its final act descends into histrionics, there's an copious amount of profundity in the milieu.

Director Ziad Douieri, whose previous effort The Attack made waves during it’s limited run in 2012, presents the first twenty minutes of the drama and wastes no time in jumping straight into the action - with fluidity that builds tension and intrigue with relative ease. And it’s not hard to find the drama engaging , with superlative performances, a keen attention to detail and a delicately handed snapshot of arrogance in a community of outsiders.

It all starts with a leaky drain; whilst watering his plants on his balcony, family fam and local mechanic Tony (Adel Karam) has an illegal drainpipe spew water over construction foreman Yasser (Kamel El Basha). Hoping to become a good samaritan and do the right thing, Yasser attempts to fix Tony’s his drain only to be met with it’s destruction minutes later. Words are exchanged, compromises are suggested by a third party - in the vein of Yassar's boss with whom a law suit and bad publicity are his greatest nightmare - but his stoic stubbornness and pride are self-evident. Slowly, it all becomes as ridiculous as a squabble between toddlers in the playground, with insults hurled and punches thrown. Before you know it, there in a court room with the world watching and fractions of the nation divided by party and spiritual lines.

Building the plot up in such a fashion was by no means a mistake from our Lebanese director (who worked with Quentin Tarantino as a assistant camera in the late 1990s), as his decision to show the argument without little to no context of the characters affirms the films underlying message that the argument isn't really that important - but there reactions most certainly are. To make matters more complicated, the personal lives off the two men make their petty squabble that much more profound. Yasser, a Palestinian refugee with an immigration status more questionable than resolute, and his hot-headed-ness have gotten him into trouble on several occasions and can't afford another mis-step. On the other hand, Tony’s wife is in her third-trimester and is desperate to move out of Beirut into a safer neighborhood. Suffice to say, both men have much too loose, which makes the drama that much more interesting when it's revealed that all of it could have been avoided with a simple apology.

When the courtroom sequences begin, it slowly becomes apparent that their fracas has less to do with personal pride and more in common with allegiances to religion: Yassar is the Palestinian Jew now living in a mostly christian community, of which Tony is a proud representative. A wickedly erudite script holds together the bulk of the drama, as secrets and lies start to unravel and the intricacies of the characters start to contextualize.

Even if your knowledge of middle eastern history is as sketchy as mine was before the films beginning, you won’t be required to brush up on the complicated relationship between Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, as the film has a lot of fun in reminding your of the civil war of 1990 and other subsequent wars. Though to the credit of the filmmaker, this isn’t a ploy to garner sympathy or even to investigate the plot, but to remind the audience of the brooding anger within the community.

As Douieri's drama finds it's way into it's final act, it's propensity for absurdity becomes more notable than anything else. With a national trial now on everybody's minds, Yasser and Tony become desensitized to their anger with one another and suddenly find themselves merely chess pieces in a much larger game. Though these sequences are executed and superbly acted, especially by the wiley-eyed prosecutor Wajdi Wehbe (Camille Salameh), they are perhaps less subtle in their representation of a fractured state. Nevertheless, here's a film about tolerance in an environment of poor acumen, and where arrogance and testosterone can produce harmful rhetoric more dangerous than the typical forms of aggression.

Rating 4/5.