We are all victims of the history, or can we manage to control it at the expense of everything? This question fits perfectly with the storyline of Farha, a film we are going to talk about today in this one review. Trying to be yourself in relation to the cultural context in which you were born, opening up to new difficulties by clashing with local stylistic features, emerging and keeping the scars on you forever. Darin J. Sallam inlaid his film with many of these reflections, presenting it first to the Toronto International Film Festival and al Busan International Film Festival and following the Sixteenth Rome Film Festival. The weight of the material treated certainly managed to make its way into the audience right away, leaving however some doubts open regarding the structure general and the yield of some developments.
A little girl and the story
Farha’s plot is set in 1948, precisely in a small village in the Palestine. Here a young girl, the one who is the title of the film (played by Karam Taher), tries in every way to find its own way, even challenging local cultural conventions. His dream is to to study, to immerse yourself in culture through school. At first he meets the hesitations of his father (Ashraf Barhom), whose first thought is to protect it by arranging it, perhaps in marriage. Later, also convinced by his uncle, the latter will give in to the desire of his daughter. Unfortunately, however, their happiness will last very little, given that the outbreak of the war will upset all the cards on the table.
The choice of setting everything during the “Nakba” (the exodus of the Arab-Palestinian peoples at the end of the British Mandate, during the Arab-Israeli war) is essential in the understanding of the message basically. Also because we could easily divide the film in question into two parts distinct: the first, in which the various protagonists and the general context, and the second, with the war, the violence and the little protagonist locked in a cellar, hidden from everything, but still involved. This second choice in Farha, as we will deepen later in the review, will prove interesting at first, and later quite limiting.
AND the inevitability of history to change everything, showing us the violence of a life literally overwhelmed by events. In reality, from the beginning there is this particular scent, as if something was about to arrive inexorable. When everything breaks out, the themes suddenly change, transporting everything into a new one direction. Under the director’s magnifying glass there is not only a particular cultural context, but also the relationship that history has with human beings. The violence of the events highlights a cruelty that never scruples anyone’s life, not even that of children. Childhood and therefore pain, cruelty and naivety, the will to live against anger and death.
A formal discourse that tries
As also written above, it is fair to break this film into two also from the point of view formal. In the first part we will have a set of images that in addition to talking about the protagonists, also highlights the context (with particular attention to uses And costumes locals). In the second, however, everything falls into the darkness of the refuge where Fahra is located. The fact of translating general events through the gaze of a little girl works up to a certain point, slowing down drastically the pace of the film from the second half onwards. It is precisely this time dilation that slows everything down the most, without working too much in the long run. The fact that directing plays a lot with sounds and the perception of the protagonist works up to a certain point, while remaining the interpretation of Karam Taher credible until the end.
A type of image, therefore, that speak out still openly with the viewer, enveloping him and suffocating him, stealing every single breath from him. However, the pace drops and with it the general attention. There force of this little woman, however, emerges in its entirety, and stands as a symbol of one resistence which supports the entire narrative, enhanced by the interpretation of the aforementioned actress. All this does not fully convince, however, striving for a vision that would have deserved a dynamism greater. Certainly the fact of centralizing most of the reflections around the aforementioned girl is fundamental to underline in a review by Farha, but the approach towards the “side“. The world in which Farha herself moves and of which she herself is afraid reminds us in every moment that the value of a human being is always relative, always tied to something else. Hence one of the biggest denunciations of the film which not only deals with a precise historical period, but also with the way in which humanity was absorbed and incorporated. How it does this is questionable, but the message remains clear from start to finish.
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