A Sad and Beautiful World Review

Love in the Shadow of Collapse

By: Marc Kozak

A Sad and Beautiful World

Love in the Shadow of Collapse

By: Marc Kozak

It’s perhaps not too surprising to learn that birth rates have been declining worldwide for some time, with the majority of countries reporting higher numbers of deaths than births. There are many reasons for this, but most of them have to do with feelings of uncertainty about what it takes to simply exist in this chaotic modern world. The cost of basic necessities like food and shelter continues to go up and up, while it’s increasingly difficult to find a job that can make ends meet. How can you afford to have a child if you don’t even know if you can afford a roof over your head every month?

People who live in areas torn apart by war or political turmoil must also ask themselves if it’s worth bringing new life into such a dangerous and unstable environment. For filmmaker Cyril Aris, this question formed the genesis of A Sad and Beautiful World, his first feature film and the Lebanese entry for Best International Feature Film at the last Academy Awards. “In Lebanon, every generation has their own trauma associated with the country and the region,” Aris says. “And at some point, it really makes you wonder if there’s really any hopeful future for future generations in Lebanon.”

Aris uses Lebanon’s current instability as a backdrop for an intimate and powerful story of romance between two people with opposing views about the possibility of a hopeful future in such a turbulent place. While the romantic architecture of the story is familiar, the pervading atmosphere of danger and helplessness feels particularly modern, giving the movie a sense of weighty importance, as if it’s prodding at urgent questions about relationships and family that don’t have any good answers at present. The end result will leave you wanting to simultaneously burn it all down and protect it at all costs, a conflicting kind of melancholy that is accurately pegged by the movie’s title. Sure, everything is on fire and the world is falling down around us, but maybe the best refuge we have is to fall in love.

If the sentimentality of that last sentence has you running towards the exits, be warned: there is a level of earnestness here that might irk the more cynical at heart. This is a story of reunited childhood lovers, after all, miraculously reunited by the primal forces of fate, their love the product of forces beyond the stars, a storybook tale of destiny mixed with a dash of magical realism. Still, it’s relatively easy to forgive Aris these narrative contrivances; romance likely feels a little supernatural in the middle of a warzone. It helps that the two main characters are very likable and sensibly grounded, and we want them to be happy, even if they aren’t sure if happiness is an achievable goal.

" A Sad and Beautiful World is not only successful as a romantic drama, but also as a complicated love letter to a country in turmoil. "

The movie bounces around between three separate eras in the lives of Nino (Hasan Akil) and Yasmina (Mounia Akl). As children, they attend the same school in Beirut and develop doe-eyed crushes on each other, agreeing to be boyfriend and girlfriend even as Yasmina’s crumbling family life threatens to (and ultimately does) relocate her. Gunfire and bomb blasts are a common soundtrack to their daily lives, causing Nino to chant “not war, not war, not war” to himself when he gets startled by a loud truck or fireworks. Despite growing up amidst such turmoil – in addition to tragically losing his parents at a young age – he is still an extremely optimistic and goofy kid, a contrast (and attraction) to Yasmina, whose unhappy childhood has given her a bleaker outlook on her future prospects.

As we fast forward to Nino and Yasmina’s adulthood, the movie adopts a more traditional rom-com tone. Nino hustles to bring people into his restaurant while struggling to keep his talented but overly stubborn chef from insulting customers, while Yasmina fights to earn respect in her position at a corporate consultancy firm. Nino is still excitedly looking for love, using apps to try to arrange dates, while Yasmina has buried herself in work, resigned to a solitary life. A freak event that stretches all believability (or is it fate) causes the two to reunite for the first time since childhood, and sparks begin to fly immediately.

Yasmina is charmed by Nino’s energy and enthusiasm but is initially cold to the idea that their increasingly frequent meetings are anything other than a temporary occurrence. She is trying to get her company to transfer her out of the country so she can escape not only the ghosts of her past but the dangers of the present, including one of the most devastating economic collapses since the 19th century. Nino, on the other hand, has plans to expand his business, never even considering the possibility of leaving. “You know the country’s falling apart, right?” Yasmina says as she stares at Nino with disbelief. Still, their chemistry is undeniable – after their cinematically dramatic first kiss, the two spend the night together, and Nino is hooked. He equates being with Yasmina with “making it to the island,” a paradise he created in his imagination as a child that represents his idea of a safe place (and a setting that Aris literalizes by shooting epic, colorful scenes of a sparkling island paradise, with the camera speeding towards it as if Nino is forever chasing its shores). Yasmina, while charmed, remains skeptical.

As the couple continues to evolve, they begin to run into some very serious questions about their lives together. Are their attitudes about the future too incompatible in the long run? Nino has always wanted a family, but Yasmina thinks that is irresponsible (“This is no environment to raise a child,” she protests). Yasmina’s job gives her a potential escape route, but Nino loves his country, warts and all, and has no desire to leave the restaurant that has been in his family for generations.

The tragedy of the story is that many of these decisions get taken out of their hands. Even when all they want to do is live on a hillside in peace and quiet, the country simply won’t let them. The currency continues to devalue at alarming rates, and it becomes untenable to keep a restaurant open. Their friends and neighbors flee the country, hoping to start over somewhere else. Aris makes a point of frequently displaying the city as a wonderful place to be, a gorgeous, modern cityscape full of good-natured people. You can feel his love and frustration in equal measure; it is a land marked by violence and suffering, but also peace and cultural richness. Those conflicting attitudes are cleverly shadowed by the beliefs of Nino and Yasmina, doubling the significance of what would otherwise be a fairly standard love story. Nino and Yasmina’s relationship is a reflection of the country itself; a clash of two extremes.

Hasan Akil is captivating as the motormouthed Nino, bounding around the screen with a song in his heart. As Nino’s optimism is slowly chipped away, Akil does a tremendous job communicating the pain that the country is causing him, slowly deflating like a never-say-die sports fan who has no doubt that his team can come back, only to be crushed at the final buzzer. Mounia Akl, herself a director of films, is equally wonderful as the more stern-faced Yasmina. She is serious and reserved but also allows for moments of levity and humor that make her chemistry with Akil all the more believable. The camera also clearly appreciates how good-looking the pair are (and so do we), as cinematographer Joe Saade’s camera is often right up in their faces, using the physical closeness to provide a higher level of intimacy.

A Sad and Beautiful World is not only successful as a romantic drama, but also as a complicated love letter to a country in turmoil. The ending suggests that it may be hard to imagine a stable future there, but it also still allows for the kind of hope, foolish or otherwise, that can only be borne out of love.