A Sad and Beautiful World

Audience Reviews

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dac 4h I should’ve known that my anticipation for this film’s greatness would be rewarded! THANK YOU, THANK YOU LAEMMLE THEATRES FOR DISTRIBUTING THIS! For the newcomers, the easiest comparisons I can make as far as films that this feels influenced by are 1979’s A Little Romance, the Hulu drama Normal People, Celine Song’s Past Lives and Mike Flanagan’s Life of Chuck. The work director-actor MOUNIA AKL and HASAN AKIL have done in A Sad and Beautiful World / نجوم الأمل و الألم with Cyril Aris’s direction is nothing short of remarkable. Besides the obvious fact that this film “reflects [Cyril’s] own perception of his country” of Lebanon, its enduring culture and cuisine, and the endless wars that threatened to put it to death, A Sad and Beautiful World shows that people like countries are resilient. Mounia and Hasan’s performances spring and take root from the cinematic art form but grow and evolve out of such organic loins too, delivering a story that is ordinary and mundane with two people living in their separate individual domains, falling in and out of love through the years but remaining between it all, truly star-crossed. Nino and Yasmina’s story is one of excruciation, trepidation and rejuvenation. Born within minutes of each other, the two become smitten at a very early age, and are destined for great and terrible things. Of weathering the storms of passion in life and facing “absurd wars” all around them whether it’s the literal wars nations fight or the absurd conflicts fought between friends and family over the smallest of things like there being too much salt in one’s food. Of connections coming naturally or unexpectedly. Or simply struggling against what Aris calls the “legacy” of “broken childhoods.” Decisions we refuse to make come back to haunt us years later when we see them reflected in the faces of our own flesh and blood. Of our clashes with realism and imagination, the very coping mechanisms we need and cling to in order to survive that may work for one but not another. Of fears that the worst possible outcomes might happen because you live in a world of catastrophe. Hospitals being destroyed in the firestorms of genocide and hatred. Fireworks being mistaken for bombs. Rockets flying off to space before coming back down to earth as failed experiments of national pride. Just like the expectations we have of a future free from war, bloodshed and fear. Every decision made by both the filmmaking and the characters add to the film’s exploration of what it means to be human, meshed together in a solid whole so that we understand when Yasmina and Nino face the adversities of their lives from a really fragile or fearful place. Yasmina’s fears as an adult of having a child contrast with the lack of agency she has when she's a child to prevent her parents' separation. These aspects of her life, universal to all of us, are reflected in the very prevalent and real debate of recent years. Is it a smart and even more moral decision to birth a child into a world of so much death and destruction, unemployment and social upheaval? Why should she have a child when her reality is that her parents never cared for her? “What do you love about me? My parents barely do.” - Yasmina “I just love you.” - Nino Yasmina asks this of Nino and further elaborates how jaded she’s become from the world that her skepticism defines the film’s backdrop and her own motivation. She’s afraid to set down roots. She doesn’t have the same love of their home and hearth the way Nino does and she secretly continues to nurse an enmity towards her mother “If we’re doing this blame game again, count me out.” - Yasmina’s mother JOE SAADE (Costa Brava, Lebanon), a frequent collaborator of Mounia Akl’s, shot the film and every shot is gorgeous. But shots in themselves lack meaning unless they are put together with others, and that is what makes the film define what filmmaking is: “the process of assembling different small images, sounds or clips together to tell a story.” Often better described as montage. The dreams and fears that each partner has relied upon to stay afloat in a wartorn Beirut that transcends generations are illustrated through subtext and flashback sequences but ones that never feel forced because the editing of ARIS and NAT SANDERS informs in stretches. It flashes but never too fast or too slow. “Keep the pace up.” Alongside Cyril Aris, NAT SANDERS was responsible for editing A Sad and Beautiful World and it stands to reason why the print they left is so strong. Fans of the art and craft of editing will know Sanders for his work on the masterpiece called The Moonlight in addition to The Glass Castle, If Beale Street Could Talk, Just Mercy, Shang Chi and the Legend of Ten Rings, AND very recently, Spider-Man: Brand New Day! Several key montages define why this film is such a massive success. When the film begins, Aris's script already successfully underlines the chaotic and comedic edges to Nino and Yasmina’s life🧂 early on, particularly when they unknowingly first meet at the hospital. The editing expands on what's on the page, cross cutting between singles of Nino and Yasmina, both on the phone, as they simultaneously try to argue with each other. The standoff continues until Nino finally acknowledges the obvious and they get off the phone. In his first notable victory, Nino convinces her to accept his apology for destroying her mother’s store entrance (and invitation) by inviting them to dine at his family restaurant. What we have here and afterward at the restaurant where chef and customer come to blows, and what is really motivated chaos serves up the defining ingredients of who Nino and Yasmina are and the world they live in. “Take a chill pill, will you?” Yasmina’s mother tells her. “Pasta and potatoes. That’s starch overload.” LOL! Therefore, when the moment comes, they recognize one another again, and all time stops, we feel a wonderful beat. A beat to rule all beats. 🏝️ The world is exploding and these two only have eyes for one another. The glue being the image of Nino’s parents that allows Yasmina to go back in time and flashback to her relationship with that little boy who she decided to run off with after school and experience that kind of escapism. When the younger Nino (played by MOHAMMAD FARHAT) tells the young Yasmina (ALEX CHOUEIRY) he thinks his parents are now on an island, she whispers in his ear and out of the true kindness in her heart, asks him to close his eyes and imagine the island. An escapism that reaches her again in the present as she decides ultimately to throw away a job reposting to be with that same boy with whom she describes to have the most annoying face. Whom she kisses like her life depended on it. And what is life but making sacrifices and gambles? Of doing what we might think is dangerous and risky when it makes us actually feel? Funnily enough, I once had a friend who was born within days of me. Our parents were work colleagues, and when we were kids and having cute play dates, she asked me if I wanted to get married. I was an idiot boy and didn't say anything. That happened. Well, it was cute and heartwarming to see a similar story take shape here. The first kiss 🫂 between Nino and Yasmina is a moment that is so refreshingly done. It filled me up with such unbridled anticipation and exhilaration as Aris has them run with step-printing effects before the two lovers embrace in a tunnel with a series of sequences that chalk up to one of the most passionate love scenes I’ve ever even seen put to film. FLASHES OF LIGHT AS A METRO TRAIN is passing non-diegetically in our mind’s eye and ears. The CRASHING OF THEIR LIPS. Like WAVES splashing into a sea wall or around a PEBBLE BEACHHEAD… Which we subsequently see represented cinematically. It just awakened my deep passion for not only cinema but romance and the sexual urges I often repress. Let’s just say, even though sex scenes can become very overdone in movies, Aris effortlessly shoots and portrays it in such a way that it is both nice to look at, and more significantly, aligns with the film’s poeticism. “Screw every part of you.” 🤭 “Last night. Legendary.” 🥰 Simple shots like the two lying next to the orange sofa table. 🛋️. Oh my god. They really were thinking of everything visually and narratively. And umm, is it just me or did Cyril Aris restage and pay homage to the run-up-the-stairs scene 🏃‍♂️ 🏃‍♀️ in Летят журавли / The Cranes Are Flying where in what I’d call one of my favorite films of all time, Mikhail Kalatozov directs Veronika (Tatiana Samoilova) and Boris (Aleksey Batalov) to run up the stairs up to the apartment with the camera circling around the stairs? Joe Saade seems to have done the same thing with Yasmina returning to Nino’s apartment, her chasing him up the stairs while both are holding plates in their hands and AHHHH! I LOVE it. But as the film time skips into their lives as parents, it bears fruit to contrast those moments of pure happiness with the reality that life assumes in older age. In one later scene, in particular, their daughter, Amal (Valentina Hachem), is having her photo taken for a passport. Yasmina scolds both Amal and Nino for Amal's inability to keep a straight face because according to her, Nino is distracting her. Here we see two parents competing for their child’s future. One parenting through happiness and carefree humor. The other is driven by the objective. An objective where she thinks they're moving away from Beirut to Dubai will ensure that they can have a better life. Where in short, the ends define the means. The ends directly or indirectly being the normalizing of child trauma. Where a child is in danger of learning that it isn’t okay to have fun and to smile. That the natural state of living is to suffer and feel pain. I am not condemning either because both Yasmina and Nino have their fair share of flaws that we can critique. But simply stating a matter of fact and how easily Yasmina's way of raising her child parallels her own childhood trauma. In one flashback, in particular, Yasmina’s mom is trying to talk to her about their moving away (mother’s face noticeably framed out of the shot) before Yasmina’s dad steals her attention away by encouraging her to watch TV with him. Except whereas we never see the parents and therefore feel that separation between child and parent and lack of hindsight, every time Amal is shown in the film, Aris adopts her perspective and puts us in her subjective experience as she slowly learns about the world through her parents’ conflicts and reconciliations. And yet in between the friction and sadness, they remain bound to one another as shown in a scene where they converse through a keyhole and we see nothing but their blinking eyes. Optimism can be positive and toxic. Despair can also be positive and negative. Nothing lasts forever. People come and go. Even people we are meant to be with. We can’t hold onto the places forever either. But what is everlasting and essential as Antoine de Saint-Exupery would say “is invisible to the eye:” love. “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.” The whole unofficial chapter near the end of the film that establishes how much more significant a role Nino’s grandfather played in his life than we (or at least I) anticipated sells the movie and the aforementioned messages. I really treasured the chance to get to know my own grandparents and spent a lot of time with them before all four of them passed on a few years ago. Therefore, I started to catch onto why Nino was so lost as his grandfather started to slip away and into the void. The belief system that shielded Nino for so long from the pain of living, solidified in such instances as when he is a child and tells Yasmina he just loves her, shatters. The filmmaking informs us of this too but indirectly as Aris doesn’t place him up front but uses individual beats to describe the out of body experience of wrestling with the reality of death. Beats like when Amal is visiting her great grandpa and finding out about age, death and sickness for the first time. The scenes where Nino is truly rejecting the idea of closing the family restaurant and yet begins thinking about other business ventures. More heartbreaking still, the moments where he is firmly pushing his dearest friends away after they tell him that they have found work elsewhere. In his spiral out of control and into grief, the darkness really surrounds him and binds him literally and figuratively with the cameraman ably circling around Nino as he stands, trapped by the sink in his kitchen, the whole room purposefully lit with a darker tenor than the restaurant was in its glory days. With every passing day of his grandfather’s slow journey into darkness, Nino is digging a hole for himself and burying himself in it and is in danger of complete self-entombment were it not for the loved ones around him. The moment after Nino leaves his now dead grandfather and Yasmina takes Nino into his arms and they stand there, seemingly for eternity, fully allows the characters to find their footing again to that effect and even more in the series of vignettes of the places where Nino’s grandfather resided afterward with the rays of light passing. What I took away most through all of these moments is that while Yasmina always feared the act of making decisions when she found herself caught up between a rock and hard place and finally learns to find peace (“I tell myself it’s a new adventure”), the death of Nino’s parents affected him in the gravest fashion and made him naturally afraid of losing things. But as Robert Frost says in his poem, Nothing Gold Stays, “nothing gold can stay.” Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay. A Sad and Beautiful World is a film that Lebanon sent to the 98th Academy Awards and justly won the Audience Awards at the Venice Film Festival. Despite not receiving the attention it clearly deserves, I heartedly agree with Mounia who states she read it like a “story. I forgot I was reading something that someone wrote.” It lacks that filmic quality all the more so because he frames the question of how families can survive in a world "constantly going through turmoil and upheaval" as “unanswerable.” The film instead has a grounded approach, the pacing and editing is nigh on perfect in reflecting Aris's message, and yet the tone is balanced to the hilt between the totem poles of romantic and bleak. Down to when Nino describes her hair to be like macaroni. When she tells him they are now boyfriend and girlfriend. And they agreed to run away together the next day. Can I quickly express before I conclude that so few films make the child actors such a prominent part of the entire scope of the piece and yet Aris ably rose up to the challenge and ended up giving the kids so much to do? Even more so when the kids look so much like their older counterparts (a credit to Casting Director RITA GERGES). Aris tells us that he “rolled for a long time” and “allowed them to play… as the eight year olds that they are. That is truly magical when you catch a genuine reaction or a genuine declaration of love from one eight year old to another. When you write it, it’s never as good as when they are actually doing it.” I appreciate A Sad and Beautiful World like a gift of the gods that Cyril Aris has bestowed upon us. I want to see it again as soon as possible, and see even more to fully grasp what it’s saying about life. I encourage you to see it too if it’s playing in your area. “It’s a sonic boom not an Israeli bombing, okay?” Am I the only one who thinks Mounia Akl resembles Monica Barbaro? See more Josh Aug 7 The story itself isn’t particularly complicated, and you can kind of see where it’s going, but it’s so beautifully shot and so deeply touching. There’s just something incredibly tender about it See more Anthony Jul 27 Beautiful story, beautifully told, excellent acting. One caveat. I watched it with an Arabic speaker who loved the movie but was disturbed by the level of extreme vulgarity of the language which did not come across in the subtitles. This would seem to be unnecessary and could take from the experience of Arabic speakers and in contrast with the nature of the movie See more Georges C 5d A wonderful Movie. Not to be missed!💟 See more Valerie C @vjoan Aug 6 Beautiful story, great acting with a positive universal message about love, family helping each other while struggling in a war setting, and hope See more Ana M @Miss.Dynamita Aug 4 What a beautiful film. A Sad and Beautiful World is a love story, but also so much more than that. It is about the places, people and moments we choose to call home. Following Nino and Yasmina through different stages of their lives, the film captures that strange, beautiful way life can pull us apart and somehow bring us back together again. Lebanon feels like another character in the story: beautiful, complicated, wounded and impossible not to love. I left the theater thinking about what "home" really means. Sometimes it is a country. Sometimes a city. Sometimes another person. And sometimes it is simply finding your way back to yourself. Beautifully made, deeply human, romantic without being naive, and full of heart. Exactly the kind of international cinema I want to see more of. See more Read all reviews

A Sad and Beautiful World

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