Iraq: Son of Babylon (2009)
I knew a film made in Iraq shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussain was not going to be fun. I expected that. So when Son of Babylon started off warmly as a quasi-road movie in which a quiet, elderly Kurdish woman (Um-Ibrahim) from the north of the country sets off to the south with her young grandson Ahmed to see her son (the boy’s father, whom he’s never met because his father was conscripted into the military years before) I was pleasantly surprised.
The grandmother doesn’t speak Arabic, so relies on the grandson to translate, and given that he’s an adorable moppet, wide-eyed and curious about everything, and eager to help, the pair of them and their complex road trip are highly endearing. They meet people, make their way across Iraq, and have relatable adventures which also serve as a handy introduction to the situation post-Saddam. Very little is explained to the audience directly, but a great deal is explained by implication. Hugely complex domestic relationships are shown simply through the characters and their interactions with one another without anything needing to be spelled out. We may not understand in detail, but we understand emotionally, and that’s all that matters. It’s an extremely effective way of educating the audience without becoming didactic, and pleasingly the film never even takes the obvious move of having Um-Ibrahim and Ahmed encounter different people along the way who represent different groups and provide context. The film is far richer than that and far more subtle.
All of which serves to make the last act more painful. The BBFC warning on the cover did say the film contained “strong scenes of grief”, so I thought I was prepared. I wasn’t. The scenes of grief are indeed strong, harrowing even. Anyone with basic human compassion would find them moving, but the fact that we have spent so much time in the company of this pair and are by now invested in the search for the missing father/son makes it hit so much harder. The viewer has had little doubt that the man was dead (the film doesn’t offer any false hope), but even so the revelation is saddening.
The final scene, though, was a tragedy too far for me. It made thematic sense, it didn’t come out of nowhere, it didn’t seem gratuitous or forced, but I didn’t like it. Rarely has a film made me feel so helpless, and the fact that so much isn’t resolved helps even less. In reality, of course, it wouldn’t be, but the reality of this is so bleak that I’d sooner not think about it. Which is, of course, why it’s so important that films like this are made and seen. These events need to be witnessed and understood. They need to be acknowledged. But I don’t have to be happy about it.
Disc: DVD (Region 2, UK)
Source: eBay
Availability: Widely available; only physically released in Europe.