Boy from Heav­en – first-look review

To the extent that it’s even pos­si­ble for a film about Islam­ic extrem­ism and cor­rup­tion with­in the Mus­lim faith to play it safe, Tarik Saleh errs on the side of cau­tion in Boy from Heav­en, his Com­pe­ti­tion debut at Cannes. 

He approach­es the live-wire sub­jects he’s select­ed for his first mature project in a minute (he’s been occu­pied in his post-Egypt­ian-ban years by Eng­lish-lan­guage TV gigs and the megaflop Chris Pine vehi­cle The Con­trac­tor) with a mea­sured thriller sen­si­bil­i­ty no one would mis­take for cow­ardice or com­pro­mise, though that del­i­cate touch also trans­lates to a more pro­sa­ic visu­al pro­file from a mul­ti-hyphen­ate with roots in music videos, graf­fi­ti art, and sci-fi freakouts.

The stilled cin­e­matog­ra­phy favour­ing pen­sive long takes brings a dig­ni­fied air to what could’ve been a sor­did pot­boil­er plot, rich in intrigue and decep­tion appro­pri­ate for a film revolv­ing around what hap­pens behind closed doors. That’s exact­ly how a pri­vate board of elders elects a new Grand Imam, the high­est author­i­ty in the Sun­ni sect, at the world-lead­ing al-Azhar Uni­ver­si­ty in Cairo. The opac­i­ty of the process far from ensures its integri­ty, how­ev­er, as the film expos­es dirty deal­ings behind the scenes from com­pet­ing fac­tions jock­ey­ing to up their influ­ence with­in a pow­er­ful pub­lic institution. 

On one end of an ide­o­log­i­cal spec­trum duly illus­trat­ing that Islam is no mono­lith, there’s Sheikh Durani (Ramzi Choukair), a hard­line con­ser­v­a­tive who may be men­tor­ing a small cell of stu­dent ter­ror­ists-to-be, not to men­tion hid­ing some clos­et-skele­tons cast­ing asper­sions on his moral char­ac­ter. On the oth­er, there’s an age­ing blind Sheikh (Makram Khoury), the horse backed by shad­owy state appa­ra­tus­es hop­ing to get a foothold in the insu­lar reli­gious sphere.

The decent if sug­gestible Adam (Tawfeek Barhom) lands him­self in the mid­dle of this vac­u­um, recruit­ed to be the government’s man on the inside by the Maron-look­ing intel­li­gence agent Ibrahim (Fares Fares) and sent to ingra­ti­ate him­self with Durani. He’s pret­ty ter­ri­ble at play­ing mole, almost imme­di­ate­ly blow­ing his cov­er while try­ing to blend with the junior jihadists, but Saleh excels more in devel­op­ing the rela­tion­ships split between trust and manip­u­la­tion rather than spin­ning an air­tight narrative.

Much like with Leonar­do DiCaprio and Mar­tin Sheen in The Depart­ed, anoth­er nego­ti­a­tion between the devout and sin­ful, an inevitable ten­sion per­co­lates between Adam and Ibrahim as the lat­ter tries to wring all the use­ful­ness out of the for­mer. Ear­ly on, Adam glimpses the mur­der of the last kid under Ibrahim’s pres­sured tute­lage; it doesn’t take long for him to catch on that his new han­dlers would replace him just as quickly.

Regard­less, he forges ahead with his haz­ardous mis­sion out of a gen­uine con­cern for the legit­i­ma­cy and well-being of al-Azhar, an exten­sion of Saleh’s key dis­tinc­tion between reli­gion itself and the way its adher­ents prac­tice it. He makes the uncon­tro­ver­sial, fac­tu­al sug­ges­tion that Islam has its con­tin­gent of hawk­ish rad­i­cals with­out let­ting them over­take per­cep­tion, their bad rep coun­tered by the earnest tran­scen­dence vis­i­ble dur­ing a recita­tion con­test among the stu­dents pho­tographed in rev­er­ent close-ups.

Saleh’s encour­ag­ing return to capital‑C Cin­e­ma plays bet­ter as a cool-head­ed per­spec­tive on belief than the mov­ing-pic­ture equiv­a­lent of a taut page-turn­er that it would like to be. And that’s plen­ty, its laps­es in sto­ry­telling mechan­ics ignored eas­i­ly enough for Barhom and Fares’ flinty-eyed per­for­mances. West­ern media has trained us to brace for the worst in works engag­ing with the fanat­i­cal cor­ners of Islam, and so the ground-lev­el sobri­ety in Saleh’s treat­ment lands as a bless­ing all its own.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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