The Insult: The Illegal Gutter

The Insult is a new film from Ziad Doueiri. It’s a Lebanese film nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar in 2018. It’s one of those movies that while it’s dealing with some really heavy issues, it is a fantastic piece of engaging entertainment. The film has a really strong

kind of moral idea of what’s putting across. Even though this film is Lebanese, audiences around the world would be able to access what this film is about.

This film is essentially about a small little insult between two men. The characters are a Palestinian and a Lebanese Christian. Someone’s just trying to fix the illegal gutters in the streets. Then, all of a sudden one throws and insulted the other, from there blows out of proportion, it goes the whole way to like court, and it would be whole country paying attention. The way that it pits them against each other is really smart because they both are extremely flawed. They both have a lot of problems, but they also have redeeming moments. While that may sound like a comedy on this surface, but this is not, It is a rock-solid drama. Also, the female characters in this film were completely being the voice of reason and truth to these males.

One of them in particular, she’s pregnant at the time of this whole argument when it begins, and she tries to convince her husband to move on. This film blows out of proportion because it deals with the history in Lebanon. In particular, the history between the Lebanese and the Palestinians. This film shows how men who had survived or experiences the war, that happened throughout the 1990s and previous to that as

well, either through themselves or through family members carry it with them in their everyday lives. We all know that the conflict in the Middle East, specifically in Israel, Palestine and surrounding areas, is incredibly complicated. In contrast, the way this film tackles it, it is very

complex and very nuanced.

It is a film that managed to consistently get better by adding more elements, tensions and excitement around the whole central insult to the story. The style characterization where you start out with a character who visually from seeing them do stuff, you get the character, but the

actual contest develops over the time. Furthermore, the director uses the Steadicam by waving through scenes, moving around the courtroom and moving around the environment to get us in with those characters and keep a good flow of the story. In addition, Using the colors yellows,

golds and browns to capture Lebanon is very warm but it’s inviting as well.

What it finally gets around to is that the root of prejudice which is putting all the

problems with a group of people onto one person, just because they belong to that group leads to

horrible things. Especially, the question of who the Arabs are. It ends with this uplifting note of

seeing each other as just people instead of whatever nationality or ethnic identity. In addition, it

is not only do we just move on for ourselves, but we move on for others and for our own

children.