QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM THE RED SEA

What if your biological clock stopped, and your body remained frozen in the tender age of roughly 12? Arab-American director and writer Oday Rasheed has the answer for you.

The time is 1946, and the place is a remote village in the Iraqi desert. The environment is inhospitable, and the signs of civilisation are sparse. Adam (Azzam Ahmed Ali) lives with his family in a primitive terracotta shack. One day, he takes his slightly younger brother Ali to see his grandfather’s naked and lifeless body get cleansed for his funeral. Their cousin Iman cannot join the ceremony because she’s a girl. That’s perhaps a blessing in disguise. Adam becomes so deeply traumatised that he simply refuses to grow up any further.

His decision is immediately effective. Adam remains trapped in the same body for the rest of his life. His precise age is never revealed, yet his looks suggest a prepubescent 12 years. His hormones have never kicked in. He is tall, scrawny, without facial hair, and with a childish voice. Adam’s inexplicable preternatural abilities, and his seemingly capricious desire to avoid adulthood, immediately evoke Peter Pan and also Oskar, of Volker Schlöndorff’s antiwar classic The Tin Drum (1979). The difference with the German film is that Adam’s motives are far less clear. Plus, his life is far less eventful than that of people in the Weimar Republic. There are no Nazis at sight. Songs of Adam is not a political film, instead treading mostly on poetic territory.

Villagers cannot decide whether Adam is blessed or cursed. The majority hold very negative views, and attempt to ostracise him. His own brother believes that he should be in a hospital in Baghdad. Iman is one of the few people who support him, proposing that his condition is in fact a miraculous preservation of innocence. Despite the social pressures, Adam remains adamant in his refusal to grow.

For most of its duration n0f 93 minutes, Songs of Adam is a languid and stern drama. Adam watches his relatives grow older and have children, as he remains unchanged. Ali becomes a respectable patriarch, who demands that people address use his new title: “Hajji Ali”. Both Ali and Iman display the natural signs of senescence, being played by multiple actors at different stages of the characters’ lives. Iman never marries anyone, keeping a respectable distance from his family. His people reluctantly come to accept him. His unaltered, permanent and relatively discreet presence give him the aura of a guardian angel.

The film moves to 1952, on to 1981, and then all the way to 2014. Adam survives to see the Isis jihadists terrorise his people. Strangely, there is virtually no reference to the US-led invasion of the country, and the scars that it left on Iraqi people. Songs of Adam does not provide significant insight into the history of Iraq. It advances very quickly in time, leaving viewers to fill the gaps with their own knowledge or imagination. The movie is a more assertive with its message of pacifism and gender equality. Adam’s childlike stature prevents him from taking up arms – he is a conscientious objector with a divine excuse. And it is thanks to Iman’s feminine sensibility – despite the oppressive forces to seek to silence women – that Adam eventually gains acceptance and also affection.

Young Ahmed Ali is a mature and confident actor. He deftly blends innocence and indignation to excellent results. The cinematography of the desert – mostly filmed under cloudy and misty conditions – provide the film with a touch of melancholy and otherworldliness. The outcome is a pleasant movie to contemplate.

Songs of Adam just premiered in the Main Competition of the 4th Red Sea International Film Festival. The film is dedicated to the memory of late Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami.