It is a film about marginalized people, like migrants, their suffering, injustices they face and discrimination. This film shows the ugly face of Lebanon and Lebanese society, its negativity and hatred that it's dwelled in it.
The story is simple yet beautiful, about an Ethiopian maid working for eldry couple, Laila and Ibrahim, though she works as a babysitter and nurse for the husband.
And a Syrian refugee living on the streets. Having survived the ongoing Syrian war, metal objects have begun to form and sometimes shed out of his skin.
Ahmed’s condition evokes Shin’ya Tsukamoto’s eternal Tetsuo, a man slowly morphing (across several franchise entries) into a hybrid of flesh and metal. His condition negates the final frontier of his economical agency with his inability to even sell his organs, his heart trapped in a literal iron cage within his chest. These elements of Dirty Difficult Dangerous provide the greatest moments of intrigue, but Charaf is limited to telling rather than showing such details of Ahmed’s Kafkaesque metamorphosis.
More emphatic (and empathetic) is the plight of Mehdia, doomed to indentured servitude, subject to molestation (and the constant threat of assault) by an employer who is at least partially faking his overzealous displays of madness
One day, both Ahmed and Mehdia seize the opportunity to flee Beirut and start over somewhere else, as his health starts getting worse.
Much like Ahmed’s condition, the attraction between the central lovers is also implied rather than demonstrated, which suggests their relationship is more mutually beneficial as survival, seeing as Ahmed has nowhere to turn in Beirut. Absconding together, his male privilege, despite being Syrian, is also immediately apparent, receiving offers to sell Mehdia into servitude. The poetic resonance of their coded language (his calling out of “Iron, copper, batteries” signals his presence) also suggests a potency Charaf doesn’t entirely take advantage of, the labor infused language of the disenfranchised subverted for their own secret needs.
The story is simple yet beautiful, about an Ethiopian maid working for eldry couple, Laila and Ibrahim, though she works as a babysitter and nurse for the husband.
And a Syrian refugee living on the streets. Having survived the ongoing Syrian war, metal objects have begun to form and sometimes shed out of his skin.
Ahmed’s condition evokes Shin’ya Tsukamoto’s eternal Tetsuo, a man slowly morphing (across several franchise entries) into a hybrid of flesh and metal. His condition negates the final frontier of his economical agency with his inability to even sell his organs, his heart trapped in a literal iron cage within his chest. These elements of Dirty Difficult Dangerous provide the greatest moments of intrigue, but Charaf is limited to telling rather than showing such details of Ahmed’s Kafkaesque metamorphosis.
More emphatic (and empathetic) is the plight of Mehdia, doomed to indentured servitude, subject to molestation (and the constant threat of assault) by an employer who is at least partially faking his overzealous displays of madness
One day, both Ahmed and Mehdia seize the opportunity to flee Beirut and start over somewhere else, as his health starts getting worse.
Much like Ahmed’s condition, the attraction between the central lovers is also implied rather than demonstrated, which suggests their relationship is more mutually beneficial as survival, seeing as Ahmed has nowhere to turn in Beirut. Absconding together, his male privilege, despite being Syrian, is also immediately apparent, receiving offers to sell Mehdia into servitude. The poetic resonance of their coded language (his calling out of “Iron, copper, batteries” signals his presence) also suggests a potency Charaf doesn’t entirely take advantage of, the labor infused language of the disenfranchised subverted for their own secret needs.
