...seriously, what the hell was that? I was laughing my ass off. The hackneyed dialogue of incredibly trite and played pro and anti American views, the fade in of the dead soldier, and best of all, the volleyball scene. Freaking hi-larious. I've seen student short films that were better.
I liked a lot of the shorts, but given what a total joke this one was, I don't understand how it made it.
indeed..the best part: The director is the a actor, and well.. whatever.
Actually, it was an actor named Nour El Sharif playing the director as the short's director Yousef Chahine used to make ficitional movies that are kinda related to his life you know like semi-biographies.
As an Egyptian viewer, I agree this short was one of the worst in this movie, director Chahine completely missed the point of this whole collection of 11 shorts feature.
The level of discorse in the Egyptian film was terrible. It reminded me of Sixties-style agitprop, including a listing of the crimes of imperialist America (here provided by a convenient website), and a lame softball defense offered by the American character ("But we were acting on behalf of our interests") that is predictably swatted out of the park by the protagonist. The issues raised are worthy ones, but to raise them in such ham-handed propaganda is a service to no one.
The presentation was lousy too. In addition to the already-mentioned volleyball scene (intended as comic?), the scene of the young Palestinian dressing for battle was poorly done. As I was watching it I thought that the filmmaker was deliberately making it overdrammatic. I figured that it would be later revealed as a film within the film, with the protagonist explaining to the Marine that it was no surprise that Palestinians resorted to terror when they were constantly exposed to such crude propaganda. Turns out that the joke was on me -- what I saw as crude propaganda, he meant in earnest.
-- TopFrog
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Although it's not the best, i think this film was misunderstood.
Sure, it seemed like it tried to bring some debate very loosely, and some scenes had a lot of black humor, nevertheless i think the film is really about the stance of the filmmaker on this issue, about the process that comes before the filmmaker makes the movie about september 11, about all the variables and historical elements he has to consider, i think Chahine found this experience to be interesting and decided to film it.
So, very paradoxically, the movie is about a movie director thinking about what movie to make, about september 11.
Erm, from reading all the posts on this one I think it's fair to say you've missed the point of this film. All 11 movies are supposed to be completely different. Like the Ken Loach's film, this one is showing that despite the horrors of 9/11, other, more horrific tragedies have occurred before and since. Technically the worst one was the Israeli film.
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