By Colleen Coveney
Lebanese filmmaker Oualid Mouaness spoke about his recently released movie “1982” in an event sponsored by UC Santa Barbara Carsey-Wolf Center.
Lebanon has not seen an extended period of peace since before the 1975 civil war began. For such a long period of conflict, it’s shocking to me that I just learned about it this week at a UC Santa Barbara film screening.
Perhaps it’s not really that shocking, given that the standard American high school assigns one year to world history, which largely excludes mention of the Middle East. And American media seem to link Middle Eastern current events with gas prices in the United States.
So, when I arrived at UC Santa Barbara’s Pollock Theater to watch “1982,” a film by Lebanese writer and director Oualid Mouaness, I was entirely unprepared for the range of emotions I would feel and the history lesson I received.
The film, which came out in 2019, tells the story of the 1982 “invasion” of southern Lebanon by Israeli forces. The Israeli occupation is seen through the eyes of 11-year-old Wissam, who is grappling with how to tell his crush he loves her before the school year ends.
The story takes place at the childrens’ Quaker school in the mountains above Beirut. As the plot progresses the sound of bombs grows nearer, until eventually the children observe an aerial attack from their classroom window.
“This is a film about the desire to live and to find normalcy in the midst of absolute abnormalcy, which we see in every war in every country in the world,” Mouaness said in a discussion after the screening. “I’m hoping that this message of humanity comes across and creates conversation.”
“1982,” which screened recently at Pollock Theater, will have its theatrical release on June 6th in New York City. The date marks the 40th anniversary of the 1982 Lebanon War, which is the film’s subject.
The film juxtaposes Wissam’s innocent understanding of the world with the perspective of his teacher Yasmine, who struggles to shield her students from the horrors of war. Yesmine must navigate through conflicting political opinions among teachers at the school and cope with fears for her family.
The result felt to me like extremely honest depiction of war, which tells more about the experiences of the Lebanese people than a traditional Hollywood wartime film could.
“I made the film really for the Lebanese people, and for us to see ourselves in the film,” Mouaness said. “And by the same token, for the rest of the world to see us in the same way that they see themselves.”
Lebanese people rarely discuss the invasion, Mouaness said. Their history books end at “the war started,” and there is no intergenerational conversation about what happened and what it means for the future of Lebanon, whose geopolitical affairs today are similar to what were in 1982.
For this reason, Mouaness said, Lebanese people cannot see the film in the same light as other audiences, because it reminds them that not much has changed in 40 years. But he hopes the film can serve as a driver for peace by giving the nation an opportunity to talk about the past and learn from it.
This optimistic outlook is typical of the main character Wissam, whose takes viewers with him through the movie. To realistically portray the events through the eyes of a child, Mouaness took cues from the child actors and gave directions while sitting on the ground, so they would not see him as an authority figure and would share their ideas.
In one scene, Wissam is playing soccer after school when an assembly of military trucks mobilizes outside of the field. Originally Mouaness instructed the children to run away from the vehicles, but when Mohamad Dalli, who plays Wissam, told him that most children would run toward them, the director listened and changed the scene.
UC Santa Barbara professor Paul Amar, who serves as chair of the Department of Global Studies, asked Lebanese filmmaker Oualid Mouaness about his experience working with child actors at a recent Carsey-Wolf Center event.
The feeling that war is nearby, which reaches a peak in the soccer scene, is enhanced by the absence of a musical score throughout most of the movie. Instead, the “soundtrack” consists of the scratching of pencils on paper, the humming of political news over the schoolteachers’ radios, and the explosion of bombs in the distance, the eerie effects of which produce a film whose story does not need music as an emotional driver.
The audience, or at least the audience I was part of, remains captivated for an hour and 40 minutes, eager to see what would become of the students and teachers as the fighting draws near.
The “1982” screening, co-hosted by the Carsey-Wolf Center and the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, was an advanced screening of the film, whose US theatrical release will take place on June 6 and coincide with the 40-year anniversary of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. I highly recommend watching it. The discussion with Oualid Mouasses can be found here.
Colleen Coveney is a fourth-year UC Santa Barbara student majoring in Psychology and Brain Sciences. She is a Web and Social Media Intern for the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.