Creative Chaos: Round One

Abbas is planting a fig tree. His brother, filming him, points out that the tree is rather sad-looking. But Abbas remains undaunted: “The root is good, it’ll grow strong.” This closing scene is emblematic of the entire film. The fig tree is a metaphor of Lebanon in the wake of the thirty-three-day war, a country devastated by Israeli bombs, but still alive. Hassan Zbib gives us an astounding vision of war, cruelly highlighting its sheer futility. A surfeit of war kills war. In southern Lebanon, it has invaded the landscape to the point that people no longer see it. Victims and survivors alike react with daily gestures, far from the pathos of ideologies, and attribute what is beyond their understanding as God’s mysterious workings.