Lebanese filmmaker Ali Cherri finds meaning in quiet desolation

Capturing the heart of a visual artist

I asked why Ali's fascination with desolation, isolation, and silence extends so far —to the point at which society and communication start to be disregarded as shown in the film.

His response was limited to a few disconnected words, which made me realise how often words and language fall short in capturing the complex emotions swirling in an artist's mind and heart. Ali's skill is to depict his own sentiment visually — an eloquent language of its own, rather than through his choice of words.

This realisation made my question seem naïve — a feeling that can be common when trying to grasp challenging forms of artistic expression and their relationship with their creators.

The idea that an artist, regardless of his art genre, is fully aware and conscious of the selection of a particular theme for their artwork and its medium of expression is a naïve assumption. This mistake is commonly made when trying to understand and engage with art.

It occurs when a poet is asked why he composed in a particular style and a singer is quizzed about their choice of performance style, as well as when a director is asked about his choice of a particular theme for his film.

Such questions come from an initial lack of awareness of the predominant subconscious motivations which govern most artists' relationship with their productions, as well as the connection that an engaged audience makes with the artwork. Those feelings are tightly related to an individual's character, experiences, and overall sense of being.

The selections made in the artistic process and the experiences they create for those consuming the art can hardly be regarded as voluntary and conscious actions. The late Iraqi poet Muhammad Mahdi Al-Jawahiri aptly expressed how such connections can be diverse as well as intricate:

While others pluck the fruits of the tree,

I am stunned by its branches' beauty.

Destiny and the timeless eternity of work

'The Dam' is set on a brickfield on the banks of the Nile. For more than an hour, it depicts young Sudanese men spending most of their day in utter silence while mixing water with soil to produce mud.

They pour it into fixed moulds using simple casting tools that intermittently break the quiet. The work is professional and swift, carried out by people with long experience in the trade. The workers transport the bricks using hand-drawn carriages to a nearby location, where they are removed from the moulds, methodically arranged, and left to dry under the sun. 

Within a few days, the bricks solidify, becoming sturdy building materials that can be used in construction projects far from their isolated and desolate location. 

At sunset, the workmen retreat to their nearby campsite to bathe in the river or prepare meals. Meanwhile, Maher, the film's protagonist, sits alone on a metal scaffold above the dam's water and makes a call on a mobile phone.

The evenings are also almost entirely quiet, giving the impression that language and communication are unnecessary at this desolate location. These are lives devoted entirely to work, devoid of any other interests. They seem to be predestined to a lifetime of labour without any other option but to accept their fate.

The only respite from the monotony comes from news and pictures about Sudan's post-2019 revolution, transmitted through phones, television, and the radio. The workmen are indifferent to it, due to the lack of impact on their existence, and they treat it as they would a song played in their camp. For the film's audience, these intrusions are the only evidence that the workmen here are living in the modern world.

Slumbering workmen are shown, with only the sound of their breathing piercing the stillness of their muddy surroundings. The sweat from their bodies combines with the deep sounds of their snores, causing the mud to move with a thick motion reminiscent of the beginnings of life on Earth.

Then, a turn is taken, to showcase another life being led by our protagonist. Maher is seen riding a motorbike after his shift to a secluded spot in a steep valley, where he erects a monument out of the mud while his dog watches him silently from the top of a rocky peak.

The monument looks rather like a primitive idol. It seems to symbolise the age-old human yearning for a transcendent spiritual realm as an escape from the endless routine of life – in Maher's case, at the brickfield and in the monotonous camp. 

Then, one of his colleagues drowns in the river, either accidentally or by premeditated suicide. Later, while working on his monument, Maher is interrupted by heavy rainfall. It gradually washes away his creation until it disappears completely. In the evening, Maher plays with and feeds his dog before abruptly killing it and setting the workmen's camp ablaze.

In the final scene, Maher is seen swimming naked in the dam's water, leaving it open to interpretation if he is purging himself from his sins, contemplating suicide, or both, in one last act of nihilism.

Silence and isolation as a cage for people

Cherri has previously directed two non-scripted films. Both portray people living in desolation, isolation, and silence.

'The Digger' his second film which preceded 'The Dam', was shot at a 5,000-year-old cemetery in the desert outside Sharjah, where the graves have been excavated and their contents displayed in one of the Emirate's museums.

The site of the empty graves was turned into an archaeological site, watched over by a Pakistani guard who has served there for 20 years. The film runs for 25 minutes and shows his monotonous daily life in the desolation and quiet of the desert.

Cherri's debut 'The Disquiet' was shot in Lebanon in 2013. It may have been influenced by his childhood and youth experiences during the Lebanese civil war. After the war ended in 1990, he took his camera and filmed the destruction of the deserted downtown Beirut. The film also captures a 20-minute-long earthquake, and the human behaviour and fatal panic during the catastrophe.

Cherri considers his three films to form an interconnected trilogy. And so I am led to a more informed, if unanswered question: Did the tragedy of Lebanon shape his sensibilities, leading him to centre his artistic creativity, perspective, and cinematic insight around desolate places and their people?