Art is the final frontier for the truth
Valuable words from journalist Nora Boustany about how the 2017 film 'The Insult' adds to the discourse on sectarian tensions in Lebanon, and a conversation with the film's director Ziad Doueiri
In a panel on Reporting in the aftermath of conflict hosted by Columbia University in collaboration with the American University of Beirut, Lebanese-American journalist Nora Boustany mentioned The Insult (2017) as an example of the way films can act as a stepping stone towards healing for war-torn communities.
In the later half of the 20th century, ethnically and religiously diverse Lebanon became a battleground for groups with opposing ideologies. The country spiraled into a period of mass destruction known as the Lebanese Civil War, beginning in 1975 and lasting throughout the entirety of the ‘80’s, also known as the 15 years' war. Decades of conflict have left an undeniable impact on modern day Lebanon and the war is often described as unfinished.
The Insult, a film by Lebanese filmmaker Ziad Doueiri, dissects the social destruction left behind by war. The plot follows a dispute between two men - Tony Hanna (a Lebanese Christian) and Yasser Abdallah Salameh (a Palestinian refugee construction foreman) - that begins with a disagreement over an exposed drain pipe facing the street off of Tony’s balcony. The conflict escalates and the case is taken to court, where information is uncovered about the backgrounds of both men. Through his characters, Doueiri explores the dynamic between Lebanese Christians and Muslim Palestinian refugees and how this historically tumultuous relationship is reflected in Lebanon’s modern-day society.
The film has been met with controversy and Doueiri has been accused of moral ambiguity. One reviewer says, “For all its bluntness, however, the questions The Insult contemplates are… intractable and elusive. This is increasingly evident as the courtroom debate slowly segues from the specifics of Tony and Yasser’s case to the intricacies of the Lebanese Civil War” (Dereka Girish - Film Comment).
Doueiri is often asked to clarify his perspective on the conflict. In a 2018 interview about neutrality in the film, the director said, “This is not a neutral film at all. You can’t be neutral in the Middle East, are you kidding?! The Middle East is everything but neutral and moderate. It is a whole world of conflict. That’s where we come from and that’s what we chose to write about… We wanted to show that our two very, very opposing characters are on opposite sides of the spectrum but in every possible way they are psychologically similar”.
As opposed to critics who say that moral ambiguity undermines the complexity of the larger conflict, the previously mentioned Nora Boustany - who worked as The Washington Post’s correspondent in Lebanon in the 1980’s covering the 1982 Lebanon War and other conflicts in the Middle East - believes that films like The Insult are important because “Art is the last frontier for the truth” and that thanks to the film, “Old issues are being dealt with much more honestly. We didn’t have a truth commission in Lebanon and God knows we needed it, but seeing that on the screen reminded people of how blind they were in their rage towards the other community and how easy it actually is to treat one another with respect. Instead of having a cycle of punishment, we can have a cycle of healing through activities like this”.
To find out more, I spoke with Doueiri about his filmmaking process, the criticism he has received, and how he responds to it. His responses have been slightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Your work stands out amongst other films that explore political issues because it doesn’t just allude to politics - it tackles these issues head on. This is seen mainly through blunt dialogue in The Insult about the presence of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, starting with Tony’s line “I wish Ariel Sharon had wiped you all out” and proceeding throughout the movie. What is your mentality behind this straightforward approach to filmmaking?
I thought the historical phrases that were included, like the one about Ariel Sharon, in itself were very dramatic. If I had substituted a generic Israeli Jewish name, it wouldn’t have had the same impact because people would be wondering, “Who is he talking about?”. So, reality only reinforced the fictional side of my film. Also, I didn’t see why not to. It works, it doesn’t fake history. The most important thing is that, towards the end of act two in that film, the lawyer projects real footage of a real event that happened in 1976 - of a massacre that happened in Damour, this small village south of Beirut. The footage that you see is real, it’s not fiction. I spent a few months doing an incredible amount of research to make sure that what I'm showing is not denied or contested. In fact, there was a lot more real footage that was not 100% proven. A lot of it was 95% proven, but I decided that if it wasn't 100% proven I wasn’t going to use it. Since I was basing my film on a real event, which is that massacre, why should I have fictionalized Ariel Sharon, or the plight of the Palestinians, or any of it? I mean, everything that I used is based on real facts, and I had to mix them into the film to reinforce my story. There are few directors who do that very successfully; Oliver Stone is one of them. It worked for me.
What advice can you give about not letting fear of being too blunt when it comes to sensitive issues affect your scriptwriting?
When you want to write about a certain sensitive issue you either have to have the guts to see it through or don’t even get into it. You’re setting yourself up in advance to talk about something you believe in, and I believe that in my films I'm telling the truth. For all of the films that I've done, not a single person has contested the truth. I was accused of being pro-Israeli, I was accused of being anti-Palestinian, I was accused of being pro-Zionist, I was accused of being anti-Arab. You know, the extremists on both sides will always accuse you but none of these people who had attacked me, had done so on false statement or false historical fact. They couldn’t. They could say anything they wanted about me but they just could not nail me on the basis of historical fact.
Consequently, if you want to get into this world where you’re dealing with a sensitive issue, you need to back yourself up with a strong argument. If you're doing a historical piece, try to educate yourself as much as possible because, if you upset somebody they're going to come find something to attack you on. They won’t leave any stone unturned; they're going to try to discredit you. But if they discredit you because they don’t like your movie, that’s their right. They paid 12 bucks, 15 bucks, to go watch a movie and they don’t like it - that's something that goes with the territory. But what you want to do is make sure they don’t attack you on the credibility factor, because they could dismay you with this and then they could win the battle. If you are getting involved in something sensitive, you’ve got to believe in what you’re doing profoundly; you’ve got to have a strong argument to defend it, and then let go. If people are going to get upset, if people are going to contest you, you should not be afraid. Otherwise, do a Disney movie. That's my belief.
What's important when you're dealing with sensitive issues as a filmmaker is making a good movie. You could be telling the truth, you could be showing something that is so pertinent psychologically, socially, with a great message - if your film is badly acted, badly directed, badly written, if your music is not good, the editing is not good, you're gonna lose that battle. You need to back yourself up and make a good movie. You have to do the best that you can on every level. It’s very important, what I'm telling you, because if you are weak someplace they're going to come and attack you. If they say “Well yeah, the story’s right and yeah, she got her historical stuff, but the film is badly acted” - you lose. If they say the acting is great, and the directing is great, but the story is completely false - you also lose. So what you do is cement your story and cement your directing skills. You see, because, even when you're doing all of that you're still going to be attacked. You need to be ready for everything, and I think you should mainly be a great director and a good storyteller.
You know, I've been criticized after several of my films. After the next film, I'm going to be criticized even more, because I'm shedding some light on a very sensitive issue and I'm going to be the first one who does it. So, my historicity is so powerful. I'm in the midst of pre-production right now, and believe me, it raises the stakes for me even higher, and I'm still going to go out and say it. They're going to find something, they're going to find some flaw, but it’s not going to hold.
How has criticism of your films from the West been different to that of Middle Eastern viewers?
Because The Attack and The Insult deal with the Palestinian issue, I was mainly attacked by, bizarrely, the group that I side with - the Palestinians. Because I went to do The Attack in Israel, they and the BDS mounted a massive attack on me. However, I was looking for authenticity. I was not going to use Egyptian actors who don’t speak Hebrew to play Israeli people. I was not going to use Cypriots or Lebanese or French actors to pretend that they are Israeli. It would not make sense. Believe me, it would have been much easier for me, but the film would have lost a lot of credibility. I try to be as authentic as possible, so in my case I was mainly attacked in the Middle East but I was also very supported there. I had a lot of Palestinian supporters, although I had a lot of hate from the left wing at that time, even though I am on the left, but they said “Ziad has betrayed the cause, he's a Zionist and he’s a pro Israeli” - which is just total bullshit because I'm everything but that.
Now, I had some Jews watch the movie and some of them were extremely supportive. Most of the festivals that accepted it were Jewish festivals such as the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival and, you know, I had a lot of support from Jews but I also had many of them say that I'm not condemning terrorism because I am not pointing the finger at that woman - the Palestinian woman in The Attack who gave herself up - and that I'm making it into a romantic figure. However, to be honest, they were a little less negative than the Palestinians were because the situation of the Palestinians is so dire and so sad that they find themselves having to be more on the defensive.
When you're going to embark on your own filmmaking journey, just know in advance - you are not going to please everyone. If you aim to make a film that is going to please everyone, you probably missed the point. You're probably not saying things the way they are. People always say, “It's important to be fair and it's important to be just with everybody”. I used to think that way; I don't anymore. I take sides.
What changed your mind?
I just want to take sides. I believe not every conflict is nuanced and not every conflict has multiple points of view. I think that if you look at the situation with Israel and Palestine it's easy to say, “Yeah, I understand both points of view”. In my opinion - with what's going on in Gaza right now - there's only one issue. There aren't multiple points of view. There's an oppressor, and there’s an oppressed. You can look at it a hundred ways and it's still that there's one injustice being committed. It's the Israelis committing an incredibly large injustice against the Palestinians. I don't care what anybody says - there's one group of people that is occupying and one group of people that is occupied. Surely, there are some nuances somewhere, and it's nice to explore them, but if you believe that they are both equally to blame you are lying to yourself.
When you take a stand, I think it's important to write it well. You can create nuanced characters - I have always created complex nuanced characters - but sometimes you can write from one perspective. I am starting to see certain issues in black and white whilst remaining in the grey area on others. The next film that I'm doing is less nuanced. These are choices that you have to make.
Filmmakers who explore political subjects are afterwards often asked to clarify their stance on the issues they are depicting, as you’ve been asked to do many times. Do you believe that a filmmaker owes an explanation for their work or do you feel that the work speaks for itself?
That’s a very good question and it’s a complex question. I'll tell you how I deal with this issue, because I deal with it all the time. My answers depend on where I am. If I'm in Beirut - and I know how the Beirutis or the Lebanese feel - I kind of have to dose my answer in order to not create too much provocation because the energy there is so charged up. One single nuanced word can turn into a conflict and then you become a target. You have to zigzag your way into getting your message across but not sound like you're against them. When I go to Israel and I answer questions, I have a tendency to be a little bit more aggressive because of where I stand regarding certain issues. Still, I am in their territory. I have to tell the truth, but it has to be slightly binded.
I'm going to give you a great example of something that happened to me the day before yesterday. I had an interview about a series that I've done about a group of French special forces that go to Iraq. It was very successful here in France. It's not a propaganda film, not at all, yet I was continuously asked whether it was propaganda for the French army.
Because of the subject of Iraq, some people from the left wing said they didn't like the film because it encouraged military force. Everything became a bit sensitive, and I told them the truth. I said that the French crew was in a very difficult situation because they were facing terrorists from ISIS. And you know, when you talk about terrorists from ISIS the Arabs can be a little bit sensitive about it because they’re sick of always being called Arab terrorists. So I had to weigh my words carefully and at the same time I told them the truth - that the French army trained our actors for ten days. They took the main actors, seven of them, they put them in the military where they lived with real special forces soldiers, and they got a very high level of training. That was very generous of the French army and it’s something they've never done. They really took them on board.
Then I told a story which also raised the eyebrows of some French skeptics. I said that when I got the script, I was still reading and trying to make a decision on it right at the time of the big explosion in Lebanon and when it happened - this is a true story - President Macron had asked me personally to go with him to visit Beirut. I told him that I would go but that I was worried about the authorities hurting me because of my latest film at the time, The Attack, and he said “Just stay with us, nothing is going to happen”. So I went with him, and by the end of our trip through the seaport we could see that the devastation was humongous. I saw an entire regiment of the French army helping the Lebanese army clean up all of the debris from the explosion. They had brought a ship, a military ship, with sixty tons of medicine, books and supplies. What I'm trying to say is, had it been any army - it could have been the French army or the Russian army or the Italian army or the Icelandic army - I would have still felt touched because in a time of need you have somebody to come to help you out, to give you a hand. I said in my speech that the series is a thank you to the army. Some people loved it, some people thought that it was propaganda. But I spoke the truth, I spoke from my heart.
You know what backed me up the most as a solid, incontestable argument? Whether or not it was propaganda, the series was very well made. Nobody was able to criticize, for example, the authenticity of the military maneuvers in the film. The acting was perfect because the actors had been trained. Everything was done by the book the way the army did it. No one could contest the authenticity of the series. So, why am I telling you this? I'm saying that the most important thing that you're going to have to do - the most important thing - is nail your film. Be a great filmmaker. That's it. You're going to be grilled anyway, for one reason or another, but nail your filmmaking skills.
Thank you to Nora Boustany for her participation in the ‘Reporting in the aftermath of conflict’ panel at Columbia University and to Ziad Doueiri for taking the time to speak to me about his work. Thank you to Anya Schiffrin at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs for guidance on editing this piece.