Movie Review

Directed by Ismael Ferroukhi, starring: Nicolas Cazale (Reda), Mohamed Majd (father), Jacky Nercessian (Mustapha), Mongrel Media, French/ Arabic with English subtitles, 108 minutes, 2004.

This is a funny, bittersweet Road Movie with a twist for Westerners because it ends in Mecca. It is a Romantic Tale that involves a 3,000-mile journey with many twists and diversions until the travelers arrive at a true understanding of Life itself.

Reda is a young high school student in Paris who is about to write his final exams. He arrives home to his Moroccan family to have his father announce to him that he wants him to drive him to Mecca. The father can't wait another year and the elder brother who was supposed to drive has had his license suspended. (The father having the authority to order his son is a breathtaking scene.)

So, they set out in a two-tone car (blue with one orange door!) to drive across Europe to Mecca through Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Good roads all the way! Both are angry and resentful; the father because his son has let him down; Reda because his father has the power to turn his life upside down. Each dreads the experience of riding with someone from another world. It will be a long trip!

Reda is a thoroughly modern Muslim. He has a non-Muslim girlfriend that he keeps hidden from his parents, a cell phone, no knowledge of his religion and little appreciation for his father's need to stop regularly to pray. The son is in a hurry but wants to stop occasionally to see some sights. He tries to bargain for an hour (!) in Venice or to visit Saint Sophia in Istanbul, (although they get to The Blue Mosque) but his father will have none of it. The father on the other hand is quite willing to help an old woman in Bulgaria or to assist a woman begging in the desert in Jordan when Reda wanted to blow them off. The son's view is that he is an illiterate old man who doesn't even know how to read a map or manage the exchange rate from Euros. The father however negotiates a large and favourable trade with a man on the street entirely without words, using hand signals only.

In Turkey they meet Mustapha who helps them deal with some immigration problems, invites them to his home for tea and decides to join them on their journey. Father is suspicious and has his worst fears confirmed when they are robbed by him after Mustapha takes Reda to a night club, explains his philosophy on the consumption of alcohol and brings Reda home drunk. The father is outraged at the son and they drive for a long time in an aggrieved silence, finally broken when father reveals another modest stash of money.

As they begin to encounter more pilgrims in the desert close to Mecca, father begins to shine. He knows the desert and he knows the language. While they only have a car and subsist on egg sandwiches, their fellow pilgrims travel in camper vans, share meals with them, talk across great cultural differences and when they arrive in what seems to be an impossible place to park, strangers have saved them a place.

In scripture, fathers and sons don't have an easy time of it. Relationships are often fraught; Abraham and Isaac and Ishmael, Isaac and Jacob, Jacob and Joseph, The Prodigal Father and both his sons and Jesus Himself, forsaken by The Father. In this story, a kind of Prodigal Son Story, the son comes to himself in a far country upon the death of his father but not before they have effected reconciliation. As a final demonstration that the desert tradition of hospitality to strangers has been handed on, Reda leaves the hotel in Mecca but walks back from the waiting cab to offer alms to a woman begging on the sidewalk.