By Akshay
Remember any of the moments that your situation growing beyond recognition? If not, try watching The Insult, it may remind you such moments. The insult is a classic example of personal enmity brought to the forefront with cultural, religious and nationalistic colour.
Ziad Doaueri for more than anything else, deserves credit for bringing the raw bitterness between Palestinians and Lebanese. But, he does this in the most acceptable way. Ziad at the same time registers, the sympathy the world has shouldn't be spent on Palestinians alone.
The story in short is a really private misunderstanding between a Palestinian and a Lebanese. The Palestinian engineer goes out of his way only to ‘help’ the Lebanese mechanic with his drainage issue. This quarrel is so petty that the nationalities and religions of the involved parties do not occur at first at all.
This movie also exposes the so-called human rights activists making everything, something for them ‘to work on’.
The characterisation doesn't slacken in catching up the pace of the conflict. Small details are given here and there without looking odd. Tony (Adel Karem) coming back from a Christian Party of Lebanon's rally and Yasser (Kamal El Basha) discussing this issue at the crammed up refugee camp house with Palestinian flags around, effortlessly convey their backgrounds and their working psychology.
This film relies a little on suspense element. As it boldly reveals the suspense in the relation of the 3rd world nations. The way this revelation takes place is more educating than entertaining, it is better storytelling keeping it so. The success of this movie is that this movie becomes a good starting point for a layman to understand the Palestinian issue.
The scenes where the lawyers of the Palestinian and the Lebanese stir up emotions of their client against the other. Many of the ideas have been provoked in them that didn't surface in them at first, to make it a heated hearing.
In one such hearing, there is a line ‘Humans tend to give into emotions’ which is simple yet eye-opening and makes us introspect our manner of approach.
There is a scene that heightens the drama by making it a Palestinian-Lebanese face-off. The ‘patriotic’ Lebanese and the ‘steadfast’ Palestinians makes two individuals who were unknown till then, the face of their identity. This shows how people are ready to be triggered and less-engaged, to riot and make less known people their heroes.
There is an apologetic tone to the resentment Lebanese Christians carry for the Palestinians, in this movie. There is another simple yet overlooked fact conveyed in the line ‘Palestinians do not have the monopoly over suffering’. This initially will strike hard at the Pro-Palestinian thinkers but will make them come to terms with this undeniable reality.
Music is sparsely yet aptly used in this movie. Whenever there is a personal or a societal escalation the music drives us into emotional chasms between the changes and never distracts us from it.
The very message of the movie is simple ‘human conscience is the best judge’. When the protagonists step outside their ego they could think and act unbiased. The mechanism of forgiveness is within all, the scenes where Tony repairs Yasser’ s car after an argument and Yasser’s out-of-the-box settling scores method are heart touching.
‘The Insult’ brings out the working of conflicts and the dimensions it takes in each periphery of understanding. And urges to stick to the essential and save oneself from bias-driven decision making.
This is a very relevant movie in this age and time where people complicate and exaggerate trivial issues in a ‘need’ for finding deeper meanings in shallow happenings.
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