The exploration of Arab politics with WW1 as background and the amazing desert framing it all is as good here as in Lawrence of Arabia. The perspective differs and Lawrence survives where the Englishman in Theeb does not.
A bird sings and the mountain's silence deepens.share
I also like how the movie is (in a small way) an inversion of Lawrence. We're led to believe that the blond Englishman will be a major character, if only because decades of films like Lawrence have planted the idea in our heads -- that a white man traveling alone in an Eastern country will always direct the action around himself. We think Theeb will become his guide and will help him find his regiment. Instead [SPOILERS!] the Englishman is killed right away, and turns out to be peripheral to the real action. Note how the Englishman says "Good!" after drinking the well water -- just as Lawrence does after sharing his Bedouin guide's food. His shooting a moment later echoes the death of the Bedouin guide at the well in Lawrence, and seems almost a direct riposte to the earlier movie: Theeb restores the narrative of the Arab conflicts with the Turks and with each other to the prime movers, the Arabs themselves. Fittingly, it turns out to be about tribalism, honor and psychology, not sweeping spectacle or geopolitics.
shareExcellent post Writ_in_Water.
Theeb restores the narrative of the Arab conflicts with the Turks and with each other to the prime movers, the Arabs themselves. Fittingly, it turns out to be about tribalism, honor and psychology, not sweeping spectacle or geopolitics.Well observed point. So many narratives are Occidental-centric, if that's an expression with the "white man" as the norm and the subjects, whose narrative it is, are the Other in their own stories. I hadn't quite made that leap in my mind when I posted about LoA but it's clear now.