Kyle says:
“THE RETURN TO HOMS is one of the great documentaries on war —
horrifying, infuriating, haunting. It takes place over a two-year
period from August 2011 to August 2013 and documents the ongoing war of
Bashar al-Assad and his repressive regime against various pockets of
resistance — in this instance, a small force of revolutionaries and
insurgents in the small town of Homs, which is progressively bombed and
shelled into virtual non-existence. The politics are confusing to those
of us in the West accustomed to Syria disappearing from our news when
the next headline crisis screams for attention. Writer/director Talal
Derki has therefore chosen to focus on two contrasting young men who
are friends: handsome 19-year-old rising football (soccer) star and
singer Basset, forced to lay aside career to fight for his home town,
and 24-year-old writer and newsman Ossama.
”The story of Basset, Ossama, and their buddies — all of them too
young to understand exactly what lies ahead of them — commences with
political activism and evolves into armed revolt against the regime. In
the process, we bear witness to acts of war most of us have only seen
in Hollywood movies and only experienced through special effects
scenes. These include bombings, rifle fire, terrible wounds, bloody
corpses of children lying on the floor, men dying as we watch medics
madly try to save them, fighters hit by gunfire and their bodies
lurching in the throes of dying, tanks slowly swiveling and firing
right in the direction of the camera, buildings swaying or collapsing
altogether from devastating attacks. No Hollywood set has ever captured
the precise feel of a town totally destroyed as actual footage does in
RETURN TO HOMS. Occasional cease-fires to allow for medical emergencies
and burials are brutal in their cynical brevity, and repeated cries of
anguish to alert the world to the slaughter taking place in Syria
largely go unheeded. The thought occurred to me that the current Cold
War crisis with the Ukraine has likely resulted in Syria receding
further into old news. This is a remarkable piece of work, but you’ll
feel terrible afterwards.
5 cats
“Seen Wednesday, March 26, 2014, New Directors/New Films
at the Walter Reade Theater, Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York.” |
