Insyriated

We need the power of art to help us imagine the unimaginable. Here Belgian director Philippe Van Leeuw plunges us into the hell of Syrians clinging together in the ruins of a Damascus apartment building, under constant threat of annihilation.

The door is bolted shut with two heavy cross-beams. But they can’t keep out the horrors. Any knock could be an enemy. These people are in harrowing vulnerability.  

At the core is a family: the indomitable Mother Courage Oum, her young son and two daughters, her father-in-law, and her maid. 

They have temporarily taken in a young male cousin and the young couple from the ruined apartment upstairs, Samir, his wife Halima and their infant son. In the absence of her husband Monzer, Oum runs the show. Her courage, sensitivity and will make her the embodiment of what Syria — if any — might ever survive. The Syria of the people, that is, not of Assad.

The film’s effect is to reveal how horrible the costs that politics can wreak on a people. The film is shot intensely, with a handheld camera, covering the events of one day, with a tense throb of strings in the score. We feel the tension of the characters under siege. 

We don’t know the politics of anyone here, not the besieged, not the snipers, not the rapists, not the helpers. But when a people are subjected to this kind of suffering, a city and a culture condemned to such ruination, issues be hanged. Nothing can justify such an assault. 

We share the characters’ shocks. We expect to follow Samir and Halima in their flight to Beirut, so are severely jolted when he’s immediately shot down in the parking lot. 

Oum calls Halima courageous, but warns her that she will become more courageous still. This the rape scene bears out, when Halima sacrifices herself to save the others. She suspects Oum set her up as a decoy. That doesn’t seem plausible, given how protective Oum has been toward her, but the suspicion typifies the distrust a civil war breeds even in such a close community.

Oum’s daughters grow up during this day. The older warms towards her cousin as he realizes a bravery even he didn’t know he had. The younger daughter seems thoughtlessly selfish, squandering valuable water to wash her hair. But she realizes an astonishing moment of maturity when she begs Halima’s forgiveness for wanting her to suffer in her stead. 

The film closes eloquently on the grandfather’s profile. He has seen too much, lost too much, learned too much, so he sits there stolidly, staring out on the violent ruins about. Like a pulse he measures out his life in cigarette puffs, sending smoke out to the ruins. 

His face is blank so it doesn’t say anything — yet says everything. We read into it all the emotions we have found in our glimpse into his crumbling life. Despite his helplessness, age and rotting guts, he maintains his dignity and his doting love for his grandson. But we see a tear gathering in one eye.