Forum :
ALGERIAN AMERICAN DISCUSSIONS
Topic :
BODY OF LIES, INDEED!
Since I am a movie addict, I will take advantage of this space to share with you my point of view about a concern that is triggered in me every time I watch a movie with a story happening in the Middle East, especially in the Arab world. I recently went to watch “Body of Lies”, an American CIA undercover agent in Iraq and Jordan who is fighting some bad groups while getting help of locals. Well, I am sure anybody who watches this type of movies nowadays noticed that Iraqis, all of a sudden, speak Moroccan. Also, everybody must have noticed that Jordanians, Afghani people, Syrians, or anybody used in the movie speaks Moroccan. Let me just tell all directors and producers that if you think of using the “Artisitic Choise” for such issue, I will respond that this is BS! I am not sure these producers have somebody on the set that tells them that this is ridiculous. I understand that they may have found the cheapest talent out there in ouarzazat, the cheapest studios, and permit-less zones to shoot all their products, but give me a break. Let’s go back to our new release: "Body of Lies" by Ridley Scott, featuring Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe. Now, the main character: an American undercover agent who hardly pronounces couple words in Arabic gets to outsmart a small armed group of Iraqis after “speaking” to them in Arabic. Yes! He did it! It was that simple! This is an artistic choice, I give Decaprio credit. He learned Arabic. Let's forgive that. In one scene, the character is in a Palestinian camp. Two women are sitting front of him. Now hear this! One of the women says in Moroccan: “Echkoun had lahmaq?” refering to our main character sitting in the same room. That should translate to “Who is the stupid guy over there?” Now, can anybody telle me why in the world they put on the screen the following translation under that:“Who is that Jewish?” I think this is taken a little beyond stupidity. This is intentional mistake that should be reviewed. Living the worst for last, the main bad character in this movie is a terrorist who is giving the world leaders hard time. He blew couple places and killed many people etc. - the typical bin laden - In one scene, our bad character, who speaks Arabic reads a verse from the Quran. However, the character reads the verse wrong! I don’t know about you guys, but I lost interest in the movie and just kept thinking about why they would make all these mistakes knowing the millions of dollars allocated to the movie. Why wouldn’t one respect his or her work or the audience: Us? Anyways, I am the movie watcher and I approve this message. You ae free not to agree, that is the whole point! |