If you have a little understanding of the modern and contemporary history of Lebanon and the motivation of film creation, you will be even more surprised to realize that art really comes from life, and the drama is no less than the real life of the film story. Similar to the encounter between the two conflicting male protagonists in the fictional plot, director Ziad Doueiri once used discriminatory insults during a quarrel with a plumber. The good friend kindly reminded him that "misfortune comes out of his mouth" and asked him to apologize, but what you think is a trivial matter may be a matter of dignity for others. of coolie workers fired. The skin-to-skin experience of negligence made Ziad smell the taste of the movie story.
The two sides to the conflict in "Defamation" are Palestinian refugee plumber Yasser and Arab Christian resident Toni. A look at Lebanon's Wikipedia page, with its extremely complex sectarian and ethnic makeup and 15 years of tragic civil war, helps us get a sense of why the two are at odds. This small country with a population of only 4.1 million is the only country in the Arab countries where Islam is not dominant. However, due to frequent wars, as well as the high immigration rate of Christians and the high fertility rate of Muslim families, the population structure has been eliminated. Before independence, 53% of Christians had shrunk to about 40%, while the Muslim population had reached 54%. In addition to the national population, there were 500,000 displaced Palestine refugees, who were not welcomed by the traditional Christian society.
From the very beginning of the film, the actors used very loud emotions and intense performances to create irreconcilable contradictions, without explaining the reasons for the logic of their behavior and their personal history. Toni, who is full of tattoos and exposed blue veins, has been portrayed as a person who is not easy to provoke. Even if his wife is pregnant, he will inexplicably take the initiative to provoke conflicts with the municipal pipeline renovation workers. The foreman Yasser knew that it was his Palestinian accent, which made Toni picky eaters, so he scolded "Prick". Maybe it's a subtitle issue. Prick is the slightest curse in the English-speaking world. Maybe it's just a bastard. Is it more appropriate to translate it as "Christian devils"? In this way, the emotional damage caused may be equivalent to the Chinese being scolded as "Chinese pigs" overseas. Is it a dirty word? Maybe not; what about the insult level? very huge.
As a Palestinian refugee, Yasser has 500,000 displaced compatriots in Lebanon, but after all, he is still dependent on others. In the nagging with his wife, he gave up on himself and said, "We are the black ghosts of the Arab world." He was naturally guilty of scolding people first, but it would be undignified to come to the door to apologize.
Dignity, which plays a very important role in this film, leads to judicial dilemmas in a complex society. Fighting fiercely can bring damage to each other, far less severe than slandering the other's ethnic group with words. In the first reconciliation effort, Toni's words "wish Ariel Sharon kill all of you Palestinians" hurt far more than a single plumber. In court, Toni, who was physically injured, was the prosecution, and his lawyer argued, "Can the word 'Wish' really be used as evidence for a hate crime? Your Honor, if I'm so embarrassed, I say, 'I really want to kill you' ', Can I be interrogated as the murderer?"
In the court defense scene that supports the film's backbone and core time, is the threatening wish guilty, whether verbal violence will hurt more than physical violence, and whether the prosecution's wife is to blame for premature birth To the defense... A series of dilemma propositions, like a series of brilliant spit out. For director Ziad, "a courtroom film is a modern western, a more close face-to-face duel." Even Ziad himself was born into a judicial family, and the mother of a veteran lawyer played an advisory role that was crucial to the legitimacy of "Defamation".
It is impossible for a judge to put the two people in the top 50 for absolute political correctness. The ethnic groups who are struggling to get along amid mutual suspicion and hatred are very easy to ignite their sensitive and fragile nerves, and social unrest follows the judicial dilemma. Come surging. It is too late for both the prosecution and the defense to try to downplay the conflict.
In reality, the friend who asked Ziad to apologize to the plumber, Joelle, the co-writer of "Defamation", is from a Christian "falangist" family (that is, in the 2008 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film "Waltz with Bashir" story. , the right-wing militia responsible for the Sabra-Shatila massacre in the Palestinian refugee camp), while the director himself comes from a Muslim Sunni family that is supposed to be at odds with him. The tacit working methods of the two and the excellent film quality prove that there is no absolute feud in the world. The so-called communication is deeper and the distance is farther, but it is caused by the inertia of the lives of their respective ethnic groups that closes the channel of listening and mutual understanding. .
The protagonist, especially Christian Toni's personal history, is belatedly revealed in the penultimate indictment, the shadow of the childhood Holocaust that he has been refraining from alluding to. Palestinians are poor refugees, but what about Toni, a deliberately forgotten survivor? Even more sad refugees in their own country. The painful unveiling of the scar seems to be a crucial first step on the road to mutual understanding.
It is very interesting that, from the wives who kept persuading each other's husbands to turn the story as soon as possible, to the defense lawyers and the presiding judge, it was women who pushed this dilemma to the final settlement. So, let's imagine "sci-fi", if the Arab world, which hates each other, is ruled by women, will it be a peaceful paradise?
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