Review of Capernaum (2018) by Sarinakedi — 16 Dec 2018

When journalists question Labaki about her “film”, she mentions the great political cause that drove her to make it. She speaks of the misery she witnessed, the poor street children whom she drove by one day, her lucky young actor who was granted a visa to Norway thanks to her impactful film, etc. But she carefully avoids talking about… her film. She’d much rather talk about everything around it, leaving aside any potential ideas regarding her actual cinema. Why? Because she doesn’t have a distinct cinematic voice, so she really doesn’t have anything interesting to say about her own film. And because, as Godard said, “cinema is a form that thinks and a thought that forms”, this complete lack of voice is obvious in her film, which is full of gimmicks, superfluous scenes, and an outrageous “cathartic happy end” worthy of a propaganda film: a (deplorable) government, a lawyer (shamelessly played by Labaki herself) and the media (known for their unprofessionalism) all contribute to rescue the hero, punish the bad guys and restore order and justice. (I say the Lebanese government is “deplorable” because it still practices torture, gender discrimination, racial discrimination, among a variety of other human rights violations). Formally, the film is shot with a Steadicam and the few drone shots are just there to highlight urban poverty. The fast-paced editing doesn’t leave the audience time to actually look at faces and find genuine expressions in them. Our eyes are never free to wander around the frame - viewers don’t even have time to think, because they’re being held hostage by this chaotic and tearjerking mise-en-scene which desperately begs for their empathy but quickly becomes irritating.

Labaki invented a new genre: the cinema-mensonge. Canne's Thierry Frémaux made her famous, probably for strategic reasons. But that’s his problem. Film critics and cinephiles are not blind, and they saw the film for what it is: a calculated exploitation of misery made by an uninspired and narcissistic filmmaker.