The Insult is a Lebanese movie about a confrontation between a Muslim Palestinian, Yasser, and a Christian Lebanese, Tony, escalating until it becomes national news and threatens to plunge the entire country into chaos. I was not initially interested in this movie because courtroom dramas are generally more like This Is Your Life with the judge acting as God correctly telling everyone who is right and wrong even when not legally relevant, but I liked another Ziad Doueiri film, The Attack, which was way more nuanced than the movie plot sounded so I decided to give him a chance. I should have trusted my first instinct.
I’m an ignorant American who does not know much about the Lebanese civil war or Lebanon today, but The Insult felt too contrived to me. I remember that when I was a kid, I would be really impressed with these sledgehammer movies that explicitly exist to discuss some hot topic, controversial debate, but as I got older or was offered more nuanced fare that simultaneously tackled a specific controversy and examined more about human nature generally, I began to be disinterested in these oversimplified movies. I suppose that if there were not a lot of movies examining the ramifications of the Lebanese civil war, and this topic was a central part of my daily life, The Insult would make me feel seen and be a relief, but to me, it felt like a TV movie, rushed to ignite then squelch the flames of conflict within the time limits allowed with no sense that we are only seeing a slice of life.
My central problem with The Insult is that the characters are oversimplified. Yasser is basically perfect except for getting physical, which under Lebanese law is apparently permissible given the circumstances, and he acts as a sympathetic placeholder for all Palestinians and the injustice that they have experienced since the beginning of time. If Yasser gets angry, it is not for long, and he is disproportionately empathetic with Tony. I’ve met Christian Lebanese people, and every group has people that they would like to trade. Tony resembles no one that I have met (hopefully) and is a jerk before he even encounters Yasser, but the movie excuses it because he has unresolved trauma so we’re supposed to believe that he is still a good guy because he is a good mechanic, and his hot wife loves him. Um, I don’t think that is how this works. I genuinely missed the initial insult because, real talk, Yasser was describing him, not insulting him. Tony is extra from jump.
I hate when movies like The Insult create false dichotomies to attempt to make these characters similarly sympathetic. The only way that I can even pretend to live in a world where Tony’s actions can be excused is if Palestinians were responsible for his childhood trauma with the obvious caveat that just because specific Palestinians did something horrific to you does not mean that you get to blame the ones not responsible, but I could at least understand that Yasser was at least a trigger. The human moment that they share is cars, and their belief that Chinese products are shoddy. You can literally see Tony perk up and want to say, “You hate Chinese! So do I!” Yikes!
The Insult feels like what US newspapers were doing after November 2016 when they were twisting themselves into pretzels to excuse bigotry as economic anxiety and wanted to know what kind of pasta Nazis enjoy. Tony should have been evicted or fined. Stop trying to bring these men together like Yasser needs to reach across the aisle too. They are not two sides of the same coin. Yasser’s reaction was reasonable, and Tony is a flaming jackass. Yasser’s life is ruined, and Tony will get to enjoy the countryside. GTFOH. Yasser needs to go to the doctor and stop trying to make people feel good. You are too old to be this magnanimous. Meanwhile aren’t most Lebanese people Muslims? Where are they in this story other than jeering on the sidelines? Why choose specifically a Palestinian refugee as opposed to a Syrian when there are more Syrian refugees than Palestinian? I’m not saying that a single movie has the responsibility to show all the stories of a nation, but that the choice to make a Christian Syrian and a Muslim Palestinian as emblematic of Lebanese conflict seems problematic, especially when those two characters are cardboard cutouts of real people.
The Insult hits melodramatic, soap opera levels when it gets to the appeals court section. I have no idea what it is like to practice law in Lebanon, but I hope that it is not like this. In the US, appeals courts only examine issues of law and do not look at any new facts not already in evidence at the trial court level, but this courtroom was willing to do a retrospective on both men’s lives complete with video footage. I need movies to stop making people believe that courtrooms are the proper place to tell your life story. No one has time for that! I also think that Tony needs to sue his attorney for malpractice. There was one point when he was proving his client’s bad intentions to make a broader point about injustice. Do that crap on your own time and win this case! What is happening!?!
If I had known that the Oscars nominated The Insult for Best Foreign Language Film before watching it, I would have skipped it. Generally the Oscars like broad brushstrokes as opposed to something more abstract and nuanced. Skip The Insult and see Incendies instead. While the performances are stellar, the story is a contrived mess that purports to deal with a country’s tensions, but fails to create real characters and depict real life. It is possible that I am a complete Philistine and may lack of familiarity with Lebanon could explain why I was not engaged in the film, but I see foreign films from other countries all the time and usually prefer them so I do not believe that explains it. The Insult is a step back for Doueiri even if he gets rewarded for it.