Icon should probably say "whitesplaining" but I don't have one
Last night I went to the BFI to see Theeb, a cinematically beautiful and terse bildungsroman about a small bedouin boy - the youngest son of the late Sheikh Hmoud, the eponymous Theeb (pronounced t'heeb, not the way my English brain immediately took "th" together and thought it was either eth or thorn, we should have kept those damn letters in our printed language they're in the fucking spoken one), who runs off to accompany his older brother (the middle son, Hussein) to guide an English officer (who has no name, although his character is credited as "Edward" on IMDB so perhaps he got named and I missed that) and his Arab partner Ali (credited on IMDB as purely "The Stranger", and yet I remember a name?) along the old Pilgrim's trail.
Pieced together from what Theeb experiences and what the audience sees of his experiences, the extremely tense English officer in WWI garb and Ali are making their way to meet revolutionaries with a box containing explosives for the use on the railways; this much is contained (eventually) within the story and no knowledge of the wider history is needed. What actually happens is that after the first well is found desecrated with the dead body of one of the revolutionaries (in a gloriously shocking scene, the Englishman hauls up water and begins to wash with it before finding it tainted with blood), the two visitors have a row and Hussein and Theeb are told not to accompany them any further, as Ali says it is too dangerous for Theeb. Theeb has also been in trouble twice for touching the explosives, leading Hussein and the Englishman to almost come to blows.
Hussein however will not leave them because he is afraid they will get lost and die of thirst (and this would be inhospitable and reflect badly on the Hmoud tribe, not to mention just being a dick move, and Hussein is very clearly not a dick); he remonstrates with Theeb, and eventually they catch up with Ali and his Englishman and continue to the next well.
This well is judged untainted. Theeb finds a bullet casing in the sand. The Englishman is shot mid-drink. There is a dramatic shoot-out in which Ali is also killed, and Hussein and Theeb climb the side of the mountain and spend an entire night locked in a tense stand-off with raiders. Hussein is shot.
Theeb falls down the well escaping the raiders. They try to shoot him in the well, cannot, and cut the rope he is clinging to; eventually he finds raised stone within the well and spends a whole night in there; he climbs out the next morning, and following Hussein's instructions he waits by the well.
A camel arrives with what appears to be a dead man in the saddle. Theeb pulls him out of the saddle, goes through his things, and goes to sleep. When he wakes, the "dead" man has moved.
I feel that this basically kicks off the rest of the film; Theeb slowly forms an alliance with this man who killed his brother, the Englishman, and Ali, based on the need to survive and resolve himself. They travel together from the well towards the train station along the railway line, meeting the revolutionaries - who ask if they have seen an Englishman. Later they see the same revolutionaries, strewn dead by the railway (without the explosives they can do little to ruin the train, which even the bandit - a former Pilgrim guide along the old trail - says has "ruined" them).
They arrive at the Ottoman station and Theeb's new companion sells the Englishman's belongings. He introduces Theeb as his son, and the Lieutenant at the station leaves out a coin for Theeb, which he refuses to take. Theeb is sent back to wait by the camel.
At the Camel, Theeb takes out the pistol he has taken and pointed at the bandit twice before, and he waits. Then he shoots the man. When the Lieutenant arrives he says only "he killed my brother", and is left to go home with his camel.
The story itself is quite a standard story, and the way in which it touches on the larger historical setting and "what-ifs" of the time, while masterfully done and excellently-paced, is also a well-known one. I think what makes it stand out is that it is both visually very beautiful, mirroring the beauty and sparseness of the environment with the beauty and sparseness of the story and the terse dialogue spread out among the silent storytelling - and the performance of Jacir Eid Al-Hwietat as Theeb (who, were this an American production, would have been showered in award nominations that he would have eventually have lost out on to some Hollywood tosspot).
Pieced together from what Theeb experiences and what the audience sees of his experiences, the extremely tense English officer in WWI garb and Ali are making their way to meet revolutionaries with a box containing explosives for the use on the railways; this much is contained (eventually) within the story and no knowledge of the wider history is needed. What actually happens is that after the first well is found desecrated with the dead body of one of the revolutionaries (in a gloriously shocking scene, the Englishman hauls up water and begins to wash with it before finding it tainted with blood), the two visitors have a row and Hussein and Theeb are told not to accompany them any further, as Ali says it is too dangerous for Theeb. Theeb has also been in trouble twice for touching the explosives, leading Hussein and the Englishman to almost come to blows.
Hussein however will not leave them because he is afraid they will get lost and die of thirst (and this would be inhospitable and reflect badly on the Hmoud tribe, not to mention just being a dick move, and Hussein is very clearly not a dick); he remonstrates with Theeb, and eventually they catch up with Ali and his Englishman and continue to the next well.
This well is judged untainted. Theeb finds a bullet casing in the sand. The Englishman is shot mid-drink. There is a dramatic shoot-out in which Ali is also killed, and Hussein and Theeb climb the side of the mountain and spend an entire night locked in a tense stand-off with raiders. Hussein is shot.
Theeb falls down the well escaping the raiders. They try to shoot him in the well, cannot, and cut the rope he is clinging to; eventually he finds raised stone within the well and spends a whole night in there; he climbs out the next morning, and following Hussein's instructions he waits by the well.
A camel arrives with what appears to be a dead man in the saddle. Theeb pulls him out of the saddle, goes through his things, and goes to sleep. When he wakes, the "dead" man has moved.
I feel that this basically kicks off the rest of the film; Theeb slowly forms an alliance with this man who killed his brother, the Englishman, and Ali, based on the need to survive and resolve himself. They travel together from the well towards the train station along the railway line, meeting the revolutionaries - who ask if they have seen an Englishman. Later they see the same revolutionaries, strewn dead by the railway (without the explosives they can do little to ruin the train, which even the bandit - a former Pilgrim guide along the old trail - says has "ruined" them).
They arrive at the Ottoman station and Theeb's new companion sells the Englishman's belongings. He introduces Theeb as his son, and the Lieutenant at the station leaves out a coin for Theeb, which he refuses to take. Theeb is sent back to wait by the camel.
At the Camel, Theeb takes out the pistol he has taken and pointed at the bandit twice before, and he waits. Then he shoots the man. When the Lieutenant arrives he says only "he killed my brother", and is left to go home with his camel.
The story itself is quite a standard story, and the way in which it touches on the larger historical setting and "what-ifs" of the time, while masterfully done and excellently-paced, is also a well-known one. I think what makes it stand out is that it is both visually very beautiful, mirroring the beauty and sparseness of the environment with the beauty and sparseness of the story and the terse dialogue spread out among the silent storytelling - and the performance of Jacir Eid Al-Hwietat as Theeb (who, were this an American production, would have been showered in award nominations that he would have eventually have lost out on to some Hollywood tosspot).