Isn't that the point?
anonymous
May 23 2010, 10:06:01 UTC
I saw this just last night, possibly around the same time as you. I also loved it. I do think, though, that part of the genius of the film lies in what it /doesn't/ give you about Omar's back-story and home life. Georgie and I left with a lot to talk about in terms of what Omar's motivation was, how his wife was dealing with it (his necessarily-veiled attempt to tell her "goodbye, I love you" was actually heart-wrenching in my opinion), what the film was trying to say about police "blunders" (were any of them really the police/MI5's fault?), and so on. I think all that was left unsaid was deliberately so, and for all the right reasons.
I didn't quite get the RAF Mildenhall (sure it was that not Middleton!) bit though. Fancy explaining what that was saying?
Re: Isn't that the point?smowtonMay 24 2010, 12:35:25 UTC
Hmmm. There's certainly something to be said for showing not telling his motivation, but I got the (unsurprising) impression that the film-makers themselves just didn't understand what could lead a man to genuinely believe in suicide-bombing civilians. You're quite right about the "goodbye" scene, but I don't think she was "dealing with it" so much as actively supporting it (though with regrets, much like Omar himself
( ... )
Was I the only one who at the end of the film found themselves reminded of Joseph Heller's catch-22 by the brand of pointlessness and stupidity/absurdity, though without the whole damned if you do, damned if you don't of an actual catch-22?
Didn't get that so much myself; for Omar it seemed entirely point-ful in the sense that he really believes he's doing good work and will see paradise for his acts (and presumably the infidels who incidentally die will be no worse off than they would have been, what with being destined for eternal damnation anyway, though there's some argument that they could have become converts and did not -- I'd guess the catch-all "God'll sort them out" applies here).
For the rest of them, though, yes-- it's all just a social positioning exercise that unfortunately leads to certain doom, like going to the trenches of world war 1 because something something something king and country.
I thought it was very funny. The puffin website scene was a classic. I agree with you that Omar was a complex character and it was difficult to see how he got radicalised in the first place.
It was odd that someone in his family died defending a mosque in Bosnia. The Muslims in the rest of the world actually did nothing at all whilst the Bosnian Muslims were slaughtered.
I also enjoyed this film but didn't come out wishing I had heard anything more about omar's backstory. I thought that having the strict Muslim being against the bombing was a nice touch. The police looked a big stupid which was funny but I sort of wished there was a little more backdrop about why they were getting it so wrong.
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I didn't quite get the RAF Mildenhall (sure it was that not Middleton!) bit though. Fancy explaining what that was saying?
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For the rest of them, though, yes-- it's all just a social positioning exercise that unfortunately leads to certain doom, like going to the trenches of world war 1 because something something something king and country.
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It was odd that someone in his family died defending a mosque in Bosnia. The Muslims in the rest of the world actually did nothing at all whilst the Bosnian Muslims were slaughtered.
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