Oura el jbel – Behind the Mountains - Dietro le montagne Regista: Mohamed Ben Attia (Copia)
Oura el jbel – Behind the Mountains - Dietro le montagne
Directed by Mohamed Ben Attia
Starrings: Majd Mastoura, Walid Bouchhioua, Samer Bisharat, Selma Zghidi, Helmi Dridi, Wissem Belgharak, Ayoub Hedhili, Mondher Chouchen, Amel Karray, Ammar Chikha, Rania Agrebi
Country: Tunisia, Belgium, France, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Qatar
Year 2023
Review author: Shane Virunphan
Click Here for Italian Version
“You saw me fly, didn't you?”
Flying is a human chimera from epic times as taught by the story of Daedalus and Icarus.
Daedalus doesn't need much to rise into the sky: simply some feathers and wax, both for himself and for his son Icarus. It is an obvious attempt to simulate the gesture of birds. They help him escape the labyrinth in which he is a prisoner. For Icarus it's not just about finding the escape route, there's more. It is a question of adolescent hormones, of madness, of desire, of detaching oneself from a very present father, of challenging dangers, of pride, of curiosity, of always wanting to outdo oneself, of surprising others.
Therefore Icarus is not interested in his father's advice, indeed he wants to challenge them precisely because they are prohibitions:
“Paddle at half height, Icarus, please, so that the humidity does not cause the weight of the feathers to increase if you fly too low and the heat does not burn them if you fly too high. Stay in the middle, between one and the other, and be careful not to get distracted by looking at Bootes, or Helice and the sword of Orion. Follow me: I will be your guide."
...
… When the young man, enjoying that daring flight, broke away from the guide and, too fascinated by the sky, he took himself higher. the burning sun softened the wax that bonded the feathers and melted it.
Then he shakes his bare arms, which without an oar are unable to grip the air, and as he calls out for his father he falls headfirst and his scream dies out in the blue waters of the sea that takes his name from him. ” (1)
Current Tunisia is also a labyrinth. Deep economic crisis, need to obtain a billion-dollar loan from the IMF, with the consequent severe austerity criteria imposed by the Fund. Furthermore:
“...credit rating agency Fitch Ratings downgraded the country's sovereign rating to “Ccc-”, indicating a high probability of default with minimal chance of recovery...” (2)
In reality there are other more lacerating reasons. The deficit could be resolved – it is not a large loan – but there are more acute tensions. The tragic moment for Tunisia was the infamous color revolution. After Tunisia it became the field of a battle between the secularists, the Tunisian President Saïed and some Middle Eastern countries, or rather by a specific country, financier of a revolt to overwhelm Tunisia. For international sources, the problem is above all:
“What has happened in recent months in Tunisia comes against the backdrop of a progressive erosion of the rule of law and political and civil liberties, a dynamic that has particularly intensified since the beginning of February. The closure of Ennahda's offices and the arrest of Ghannouchi on charges of conspiracy against the state... as well as his sentencing in absentia to one year in prison for condoning terrorism in the month of May..." (2)
It is not easy to escape from this economic and political chaos. To escape, a Tunisian must look at the sea, or look at the sky.
Rafik, the protagonist of the film Oura el jbel - Behind the Mountains by Tunisian director Mohamed Ben Attia reverses the role of the myth of Daedalus and Icarus. Rafik is the father, and he wants to fly beyond the law of gravity, even involving his son, who would instead like to escape. Rafik does not “Paddle at half height” does not prevent “the humidity from making the feathers grow heavier if you fly too low and the heat from burning them if you fly too high.”
The result is the same for both Rafik and Icarus "... he falls headfirst and his scream dies ..."
The film was presented at the 80th Venice International Film Festival, with the coproduction (Coproduction) of Jean Pierre and Luc Dardenne.
A man, Rafik, is in a bathroom. There are many employees in his office. Rafik enters it with a sledgehammer and starts smashing the computers and desks. Having calmed down, he opens the window and jumps out. He didn't want to commit suicide, he only wanted to fly. In prison he tries again to vault from the top of a building. He is a deranged man. He remained locked up for four years.
When he is freed, he is rejected by his wife and kidnaps his son, Yasine, from school.
With Yasine he runs away to the countryside. He finds himself in northern Tunisia, in a beautiful mountainous landscape. Pursued by the police he is forced to abandon the car and disappear into the woods. Finally they find an isolated modern house, inhabited by a bourgeois family. Threatening them, they force their way in and manage to find temporary refuge.
Mohamed Ben Attia uses fantasy, the imaginary, to tell his thoughts and channel them in the film: Tunisia and its collapse, the allegory of human flight, relationships in modern society and the return of alienation, spirituality and secularism.
Tunisia, its fake revolution, foreign interference, social and financial hardships have caused personal and family malaise. A description identified by the director:
“I don’t know for the rest of the world, but in our country, since the 2011 revolution and mostly since the pandemic, psychologists and psychiatrists are overwhelmed by work. It reflects the social and individual discomfort I was mentioning before: our interrogations wormed their way up into our psyche. We are doing worse and worse. I’m not nostalgic for the past, but I can see there is a real existential crisis that goes beyond medical observation.” (3)
Rafik suffers from an uncertain, mild psychological condition. His belief that he can fly is undeniable madness. At first everyone is aware that they are dealing with pure dementia. Then another idea comes forward, perhaps Rafik can take off like a plane even though everyone saw him crash into the rocks of the forest.
The second theme: flying. The allegory of a country, with an exhausted population, in which the mirage can only be achieved by risking drowning:
“It was just a picture I had in my mind, the picture of a man who is running until, little by little, he manages to fly away. When I first started out as a movie director, I put it aside because it didn’t resonate with what I wanted to talk about in my films at the time. It came back to me when I was shooting Weldi, my second movie. This man’s superpower then appeared to me as something that could be linked to his intense anguish, his anger, his violence. I thought about what his life could have been like and I wrote this script. To be honest, the movie came together piece by piece, throughout the years.” (3)
Rafik's anguish, anger and violence exist, they are intense but the reasons for his mental condition are not clear. Yet they could be a happy family, he had a job, an intelligent and loving son, why did Rafik turn into a visionary by throwing himself off a cliff? This is the director's container, everyone fills it as they see fit.
What did his family have? Why did he give up? Why did he want to persuade his wife of his aerial prowess? Why did he kidnap his son to show off his power? What type of family does the director portray?
“Yes, even if this part of the story only works as a starting point in order to tell something else. I wanted to go beyond the father-son relationship. The movie also aims at questioning the institutions around us - family, work, the way we live our modern existences. It’s what the second part of the movie is about: after wandering in the wild as a solitary being, almost autistic, this man stumbles upon this middle class family who is living the life he could have lived if only he had made different choices. It’s not about pitting rural lifestyle against city life, but rather about questioning our relationship to the group, to conventions and to conformism. I wanted to show people two ways of seeing the world.” (3)
They are two different families, both with doubts and contrasts. Rafik's is full of problems while the kidnapped one is snobbish and radical chic. There is a lot of estrangement in both, clashes, arguments, restlessness. As narrated by the author they are two mirror families "this man stumbles upon this middle class family who is living the life he could have lived". They are similar families. Both are unable to deal with the complications of continually more tortuous existences. Alienation also takes root in civil and social formations in which people should feel at ease, grow and form an intellectual opinion.
Rafik is of few words. Even when he speaks he appears incomprehensible and with his mind in another dimension.
During the journey he meets a shepherd who follows him and helps him escape. There is no motivation, there is an attraction of madness in two bodies and souls with the indispensable distancing from one's life. It's not a question of city or country. Rafik is a man from Tunis while the shepherd is a loner and outcast, used to talking to the sheep and the dog. He has to leave the flock for his pilgrimage and gives orders to the dog how to monitor the docile cattle: "I explained everything to the dog". The nature man breaks away from his environment as Rafik leaves the capital.
Rafik is melancholic, indolent, unstable. He is anxious, harsh. Free of sexual or bodily references. He has a fragility and weakness hidden by a simulated aggression. His religiosity arises only in his desire to be a martyr, after all he has no other solution, he launches himself into flight into the celestial firmament and then falls headlong.
From the anger inside a banal office we move on to the purity of the evocative panoramas of northern Tunisia, full of sun and light. The three wanted men represent a completely male world, Rafik, the shepherd with his sheep and the child. They are the example of an epic mysticism for the desire to reach the myth. Instead, the apparently beautiful bourgeois family has an essentially false and hopeless tone. They are imbued with rationalism, they have no heart or soul, the son threatens Rafik's disproportionate dreams with the phrase: “Tell him about gravity”. But gravity doesn't exist in dreams. Gravity belongs only to the banality of a neurotic existence.
The search for images, the long and empty sequences, the reckless behaviour, the relationship with the son and the final aspiration to believe in a sanctified Rafik are concentrated on this. The rich family has the same feeling. They too watched Rafik fly. Rafik's religiosity has reached its peak and his metaphor: in Tunisia you can still fly.