Are there reasons to reflect upon the September 11, 2001 attacks on America from the point of view of the terrorists? An eerie, perhaps even provocative question and exactly the premise of an unusual film coming your way, called The Hamburg Cell.
The 100-minute-long European production was screened a few nights ago at the First Dubai Film Festival and before that at the Edinburgh film festival where it was acclaimed. It is certain that when it makes its debut in the United States in January on HBO to be seen by millions of television viewers, it shall trigger a stormy debate.
The film presents matters not as a bad-guys-against-good-guys affair. This is not a point of view film, but one that goes beyond Hollywood's one dimensional portrayals. It treats the terrorists coldly, almost distantly, but it does look at their lives, their marriages, their families, treating them as other people's children who were not necessarily born with terrorist genes.
It follows them from the time they arrive at Hamburg, Germany, where they all gathered from various Muslim countries as students not even knowing each other, until some started to drift into their metamorphosis from young men seeking Western knowledge to a weapon of mass destruction.
The Hamburg Cell is stark, unsentimental, thought-provoking. It is an engaging story yet uncomfortable because this film has a real ending everyone knows with thousands of innocents dead. Its actors portray young, educated, intelligent men well versed in the Western world turning against the very world whose education they sought.
It delivers the tale in a cold, bold, calm documentary-drama style that leaves you guessing about where its creators really stand. The terrorists are not portrayed as brainless nuts but conflicted folks who have reasoned their way into an insane act. You may either like it or hate it. But it will not leave you indifferent. The movie focuses on two of the 9/11 authors, Ziad Jarrah, a Lebanese graduate business student, and Mohammad Atta, a doctoral degree student. It touches superficially on some of their 17 companions who carried out this most spectacular act of terror, reinforcing the divide between America and the world of Islam.
Portrayal
The Hamburg Cell does not attempt to give answers, just to raise the bar on everyone's thinking. To the degree it stirs the water it does so in its portrayal of a sensitive, pensive character for Jarrah, superbly acted by Lebanese-French actor, Karim Saleh.
Jarrah arrives in Hamburg as a very seductive, vulnerable and deeply intelligent young man.
A Muslim raised in a Catholic school, who has hardly ever prayed, completely besotted by his deeply attractive Arab girlfriend with whom he falls and remains in love until his death.
Not your run-of-the-mill simple minded fanatic.
Saleh was captivating, almost endearing as he labours through his love of the woman who became his wife and his growing convictions as a determined jihadist.
In the film, Kamel, the actor playing Mohammad Atta, emerges as a good son agonising to earn his father's ever fleeting respect in a family of high achievers.
He balances this quest against a slow exit from worldly things into the great jihad. Unless blacklisted or boycotted by Hollywood, the principal actors by any measure have quite a promising career ahead of them.
The characters suggest their motivations were to avenge Muslims and Islam for perceived and real humiliations inflicted by the West. Their dream was to rebuild the faded glories and return to a time of Muslim empires defeating European (ie, Judeo-Christian) civilisations.
The film revolves on the litany of frustrations, legitimate grievances, tortured thoughts, struggles between life's pleasures and Spartan religious deprivations, words and mists interacting to turn these students of engineering, marketing and business at Hamburg in Germany into a killing machine.
Special screening
I experienced the film more deeply as I attended its special screening with both principal actors, all the way through a spirited question-and-answer period with the audience during which they fielded questions for a good 40 minutes.
The questions were filled with the contradictions of reality.
Committed Muslims saw the film as anti-Muslim. Two Jewish friends of mine thought it was unsympathetic to the victims. No one was neutral. To these questions the young Lebanese-French actor gave the best answer: "Why," he said, "Should we make a movie to tell you what to think? Are you not tired of Hollywood telling you every time which way to go? What is wrong with ambiguity?" said Saleh. Right on, I'd say. Sometimes a film's mission, or a book's mission, ends with raising questions.
Irish writer, British director, Arab actors of dual European or American citizenships, all involved with The Hamburg Cell, a group of artists who came together to share in a piece of work that says something about a piece of them. All troubling, searching and uncomfortable sentiments, to say the least.
Yet they must be examined since 9/11 did happen and more acts like that are by all accounts being contemplated by more of the same type of young men and women.
For Muslims, just think about this: they could be your kids, decent, pious, modern.
For Americans, it throws the ball back into the court of those who kept asking after 9/11: "Why do these Muslims hate us?" For all, it seems to want to launch a search for intelligent, as opposed to facile, answers.
Youssef M. Ibrahim, a former Middle East correspondent for the New York Times and Energy Editor of the Wall Street Journal, is Managing Director of the Dubai-based Strategic Energy Investment Group. He can be contacted at ymibrahim@gulfnews.com
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