Capernaum

There’s something distinctly Dickensian about the urchin style of life lived by “Zain” (Zain Al-Rafeea) on the modern-day streets of Lebanon. He has to use his wits and guile, his charm and his youth to scrape a living after he ran away from his parents. He did this because they gave his beloved eleven-year-old sister to be married! He lucks out a little in that he quickly encounters “Rahil” (Yordanos Shiferaw) who is herself a refugee from Ethiopia and who needs some help looking after her baby “Yonas”. She offers him a place to sleep and some food and he babysits, but when she stops coming home he has to cope by himself whilst trying to track her down and stop the youngster from becoming ill. It’s suggested that local marketeer “Aspro” (Alaa Chouchnieh) might be able to help, and indeed he appears friendly enough - though he clearly has an agenda of his own that is unlikely to benefit these two struggling kids in the long run. Finally, this man offers to place the infant in a loving household and give “Zain” a chance to flee to Turkey, or Sweden, providing he can secure his own papers. This necessitates him returning home where he discovers that something predictably and heinously tragic has occurred which spurs him to leave the house full of anger and armed with a kitchen knife. That brings us full circle to the starting scenario where we are all in court, and where the boy is attempting to sue his parents for having had him in the first place. There is a speech delivered in “The Mudlark” (1950) by Alec Guinness that effectively sums up just what happens when the state, society and circumstance contrive together to conspire against it’s own vulnerable youth that really does apply here. A combination of indifference and neglect; a lack of education and medical facilities and a sense overall that society is overburdened and incapable prevail here and this young man epitomises that perfectly. His characterisation is nigh on perfect, and as he navigates the streets that are not hostile, but cannot help him either, he shows us just how innovation and determination can work, but only so well and for so often before desperation and frustration kick in. This isn’t a film full of darkly presented doom and gloom. It’s lively, vibrant and colourful. It’s culturally rich in it’s detail and it, maybe most importantly, doesn’t judge. There are well portrayed iniquities across the board, but those are the result of generations of societal failings brought about by decades of war, corruption and malnutrition that in many cases render the parents little better at bearing the responsibilities for their plentiful offspring that those children, themselves. Western attitudes will doubtless balk at some of the practices that see adults marry and sleep with children; or people trafficking, or jails full to the brim with the homeless and the petty criminals - but again, we are not pontificated to by Nadine Labaki. We are invited to consider just what might do, or have done, in heart-rending situations where the options are as limited as the solutions. For all he was certainly too young to take a cue, the young “Yonas” complements his older friend perfectly and this film provides for a positive tour de force from  a Zain Al Rafeea who delivers engagingly and powerfully. There’s a scene towards the very end where one lawyer enters a room with a brown envelope and places it on a shelf replete with hundreds, if not thousands, of others. It speaks volumes.