Samir Habchi's only feature (to date), "The Tornado", was praised upon its release as a powerful indictment of war. The story of a young Lebanese man living in Russia, who returns home during the civil war, the film uses a surreal, dream like structure to emphasize the pointlessness of war. This would at first seem to be an appropriate use of surrealism. Unfortunately, "The Tornado" is a jaw-droppingly awful film. This movie completes the almost impossible task of being overwhelmingly heavy-handed and completely vague at the same time. I realize that my comments may be dismissed by some who may believe that since I am not from the middle east, and have never been there, I therefore simply cannot understand the context in which the film was made. I assure you, I do understand the context, and I wanted to like "The Tornado", but it is simply a poorly made film.
The film concerns a young man named Akram, who after seeing on the news that there has been a car bombing in Beirut, returns to his home city from Moscow, and proceeds to get sucked into a "tornado" of violence. At first Akram is alienated by the bloodshed, but after he is beaten in the street, and his friend is shot for no reason, he takes his revenge on the killer, and is then sought out by the killer's friends. After a series of violent confrontations, in which Akram is repeatedly killed only to wake up and discover he has been dreaming, he runs to the top of a mountain and shoots the sky, at which point the clouds open up, and rain pours down. The end.
Normally, I like a surreal structure, but in the case of this film, it is obviously only used to (poorly) mask Habchi's inability to construct compelling characters. We never understand why Akram would go back after this particular bombing when there must have been hundreds before it, and since we don't understand him, we don't feel anything for him. Some might say then that the character is meant to serve as a metaphor for the Lebanese people and not represent an individual. This only makes me think of Tewfik Saleh's brilliant Syrian film "Al-Makhdu'un (1972). In that film, Saleh used three men to represent the different stages of man's life, and yet, the metaphor never became over-bearing for he infused each character with enough depth that they became believable characters in their own right, as well as powerful symbols of the Arab people. In this film, Akram is simply an empty shell.
Another heavy-handed aspect of the film is the way in which senseless violent acts are constantly being committed. I realize that this is probably what it was really like during the civil war in Lebanon. Innocent people died every day. However, the film makes its point and then continues to make the same point over and over again. There will be a violent scene, some peace, a violent scene, some peace, and so on, and so on. This is undoubtedly a reference to the fact that Lebanon had something like 1000 cease-fires during the civil war, but the film does not back it up with a strong narrative. Although some might argue that this is the point, since in the confusion of war, all seems to lose meaning, why then, does Habchi repeatedly use heavy handed, Hollywood style techniques like slow motion, dramatic, pounding music during all the violent sequences, and a car chase climax? If this is an anti-war film, it seems odd to me that Habchi would use these techniques, since they only serve to make the violence more attractive.
The most frustrating aspect of "The Tornado" is that despite its poor quality, it was an ambitious, heartfelt undertaking. The film was shot on location, during the war, under dangerous conditions. Habchi obviously had something he felt was important to express. Unfortunately, he lacked the talent to express it.
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