Movie Review - Martyr

Mazen Khaled's second feature is about multiple things. It starts out as being about the underprivileged and impoverished, young men living in Beirut, Lebanon. It then becomes about the ritual that begins an Islamic funeral. All the while, the movie is also about what is clearly a homoerotic gaze at young Arab men. All of these things coincide at a popular attraction in Beirut called the Corniche.

The entire city of Beirut sits on a peninsula surrounded by the water of the Mediterranean Sea. It has some beaches of course, but there are parts that edge off a cliff. The Corniche is one such place. There's a promenade there with a railing or balustrade, but some young men apparently like to jump from the balustrade into the water below. Khaled did a photography exhibit in 2013 "Look / Sea / Jump" where he collected pictures of young men diving. He was inspired to do this film after hearing a story about two young men who died while diving from the balustrade. They apparently landed wrong and drowned. Khaled realized these young men were from poor neighborhoods and didn't mind diving because many of them were already drowning in poverty and the hopelessness from it.

Hamza Mekdad stars as Hassane, one such young man who is drowning metaphorically in poverty. He is perhaps in his mid-twenties, yet he lives with his parents. He's apparently lost his job and is finding it difficult to get another. He sleeps on his parent's living room floor on a tiny, dirty mattress. He is fairly frustrated and somewhat depressed about his circumstances. The movie follows Hassane on the last day of his life, as he ventures with his friends to the Corniche where they hang out on the beach and play in the sea. Hassane gets the idea to start diving, possibly attempting to prove something, given his socioeconomic issues. However, a long, running dive from the balustrade would only prove to be his last act on Earth.

Khaled's film is a little over 80 minutes. Half of that time or about 40 minutes is simply that of half-naked men lying around or being submerged. It might actually be more time than that, probably close to a hour. Most of that time, we are seeing the half-naked body of Hassane. In a few scenes, we are even seeing the totally nude body of Hassane. This is mostly due to Khaled's fascination with water. The majority of the time, the nudity is associated with having the young men be wet. It starts with Hassane in the shower. It progresses to Hassane and his friends at the beach. It culminates with a ritual that non-Muslims might not know.

According to sharia law, an Islamic funeral begins with washing the dead body. Yes, the first step is full ablution where a collective group of people rinses and scrubs a corpse until it is clean. The collective then wraps the body, enshrouding it, in a white, cotton cloth, readying it for burial. There are perhaps films from the Middle East or from Muslim countries where this ritual has been depicted before. I either missed them or straight don't recall. I certainly don't recall any American or English film depicting this ritual, at least not in a way that was this steeped and dedicated. Khaled has a 10-minute sequence where we see Hassane's friends washing his dead body.

This sequence almost leers at Hassane's lifeless form. The sequence is mostly close-ups of his body parts, his arms, legs, chest, stomach, back and even face. All we see are the hands of Hassane's friends rubbing and caressing those parts. This is after another 10-minute, breathless scene of Hassane's friends swimming and carrying Hassane from where he died to back home. Part, if not most of it is about the friends having to grapple, literally, with Hassane's death, but it also seems like yet more opportunity to leer at Hassane's shirtless friends. Another aspect is to reinforce the immediacy of sharia law, which insists a corpse be buried quickly and as soon as possible.

However, Khaled has said that he is drawn to depictions of the physical body, its gracefulness, its awkwardness, and its capacity to generate and channel meaning. He says the camera's gaze reveals his own. He stages the tactile and the sensual. In previous short films and photography exhibits, we see precursors to what Khaled is doing here. In this film, Khaled is tactile and sensual, but other than the motions of the ritual, there's not much more than the superficial.

At one point, Hassane's father has a bit of a back-and-forth about whether his son is a "martyr" and should even be washed at all. The distinctions made about what kind of martyr Hassane is weren't clear to me. It probably makes more sense to people who are actually Muslim. Otherwise, the last chunk of this film is mired in grief and mourning of this lost life. No one questions why or how Hassane died. There's no attempt to understand it. To some who see this film, they might suppose that maybe his death was a suicide. Khaled seemingly wants Hassane's last act, which killed him, to have meaning, to be a reflection of the socioeconomic conditions. The film shows those conditions in a sequence aboard a moped that's revealing. That sequence is juxtaposed with other shots of wealthier areas of Beirut, but it wasn't enough to convince me of Hassane's hopelessness, assuming that was truly the reason why he jumped.

Not Rated but contains full-frontal male nudity and masturbation.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 24 mins.

In select theaters starting November 30 in Los Angeles and New York.
Available on DVD and VOD on December 4.