Film Review: “The Insult” — Contrived Courtroom Drama, Interesting Backstory

The film becomes a made-for-TV trial melodrama, with actors delivering oratorical speeches and the plot spinning several times with contrived, made-to-shock revelations.

The Insult directed by Ziad Doureri. Begins screening tomorrow at the Kendall Square Cinema, Cambridge, MA and the Coolidge Corner Theatre, Brookline, MA.

A scene from “The Insult.”

By Gerald Peary

I have a favorite lunch place in Allston, Garlic ‘n’ Lemons, and one day I asked a member of the Lebanese work staff if she was Christian or Muslim. “I’m Christian,” she said, and added proudly, “but many of our customers are Muslim.” Oh, if that enlightened attitude only applied to Lebanon itself. As we see in Ziad Doueri’s Oscar-nominated The Insult, the Middle Eastern country is still fighting the horrific civil war of the 1980s and early 1990s.

It’s Christian natives vs. Muslim natives, with, in between, Palestinian refugees who reside there, unwanted and denied citizenship.

William Faulkner famously began The Sound and the Fury with an image of a women’s underwear hanging on a clothesline. Filmmaker Doueri’s inspiration for his narrative was likewise pedestrian. Some years ago in Beirut, he was watering flowers on his balcony and some h2O fell below on a worker’s head. Nasty words were exchanged, but, fortunately for both parties, the quarrel ebbed. But what, Doueri ruminated, if it seriously had escalated? And what if the person on the balcony was Christian and the person on the street was Palestinian?

The Insult starts with a hotheaded, rightist Christian, Tony (Adel Karam), the owner of a Beirut auto repair shop, the film’s protagonist. On his balcony, he gets embroiled in a silly verbal battle over a busted drain pipe with the Palestinian foreman of a work crew, Yasser (Kamel El Basha), who has come to fix it. Repelled by Tony’s rudeness, Yasser yells up at him, “You are a fucking prick.” Insult one. Tony demands an apology. Everyone around them tries to get the stubborn two to come together in peace, and finally they meet on the street. As Yasser struggles hard to say, “I’m sorry,” Tony blurts these incendiary words: “I wish Ariel Sharon had wiped you all out.” Insult two. Remembering the Sharon-ordered 1982 massacre in Lebanon of the Palestinians, Yasser punches Tony hard in the stomach, sending him to the sidewalk with broken ribs. And very humiliated.

Tony, out of the hospital, decides to take Yasser to court.

Filmmaker Doueri, a Muslim who married a Christian, lived in Lebanon until age 19, and then went West. He currently lives in Paris. He was a cameraman in the USA for Quentin Tarantino on Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Jackie Brown, and shares Tarantino’s love of Asian action cinema. But for The Insult, he thought more traditionally, deciding that he wanted to make a film in Lebanon which would resonate with audiences in Europe and the USA. Warning: if you are imagining The Insult to be the equivalent of an artsy, somewhat avant-garde Iranian film, think again. Doueri has said in interviews that his models were Hollywood courtroom dramas like Judgment at Nuremberg and Philadelphia.

I respect Doueri for his decision to make The Insult understandable and palatable to a mainstream audience. Still, the film is a lesser one as it becomes a made-for-TV trial melodrama, with actors delivering oratorical speeches and the plot spinning several times with contrived, made-to-shock revelations.  I’ll do a spoiler on the most egregious: the defense attorney turns out to be the daughter of the prosecuting attorney! Add in for more melodrama, the out-of-court travails of Tony’s newly-born baby at the hospital in danger of dying.

Perhaps more interesting than the film has been its behind-the-scene reception in the Middle East. Doueri has caused a major scandal by bringing into the film the 1976 destruction of a Christian village by forces including the PLO. Arab Muslims have been irate that he focused on this one rather than massacres at Sabra and Shatila by the Christian Phalanges. In Israel, The Insult was stopped from showing at a festival in Ramallah, a Palestinian city in the occupied West Bank.

In contrast, the reception in the West has been spectacular, capped by, to me, the undeserved Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film. And a 90% Tomatometer approval rating! But far more ridiculous was what occurred at the 2017 Venice World Film Festival. The Palestinian actor, Kamel El Basha, might be an excellent one, but, playing Yasser, he has little to do in The Insult but stare passively, stoically, into the camera while others attack him. But the PC Venice Film Festival jury, demonstrating its support of Palestinian rights, bestowed on El Basha its Best Actor award. Also not deserving.


Gerald Peary is a retired film studies professor at Suffolk University, Boston, curator of the Boston University Cinematheque, and the general editor of the “Conversations with Filmmakers” series from the University Press of Mississippi. A critic for the late Boston Phoenix, he is the author of nine books on cinema, writer-director of the documentaries For the Love of Movies: the Story of American Film Criticism and Archie’s Betty, and a featured actor in the 2013 independent narrative Computer Chess.

1 Comment

  1. Harvey Blume on February 15, 2018 at 8:16 pm

    Gerry, interesting review, though I wish you had at least alluded to the director, Ziad Doueiri, being embroiled in the acrimonious politics of the Middle East.

    I reviewed his previous film “The Attack,” for the Fuse
    https://artsfuse.org/90570/short-fuse-film-review-the-attack-a-compelling-look-at-the-conflict-between-israelis-and-palestinians/

    The film certainly did not espouse any given Israeli point of view but simply because he did not damn his Israeli characters sufficiently the film was banned from Lebanon.

    Doueiri:

    The Lebanese government at first approved the film—with “not a single scene or line of dialogue cut”—but when challenged by the Israel Boycott Committee, withdrew support. The Israel Boycott Committee is committed to the strategy of Boycott Divest Sanction vis a vis Israel. Eventually, The Attack was banned in much of the Arab world.

    Doueiri’s response: “There are massacres and crimes and rapes going on now in the Arab world, and the Arab League can’t even agree on what to do about it. Yet, they unanimously agreed to boycott a film. Gamal Abdel Nasser couldn’t unite Arabs. I did.”

    For more about Doueiri, a Lebanese director, and his reception or lack thereof in Lebanon and the Arab world beyond, please refer to this:

    https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/22/world/middleeast/lebanon-director-treason.html

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