In my eyes, 'War Travelers' is quite an odd object, at times challenging and imaginative, at others awfully conventional and unimaginative.
To begin with, one thing must be said, Joud Said, the director and co-writer, is not the lazy kind. What a whole lot of shots, visual and special effects, camera moves there are indeed in his film! And what an elaborate construction is his! Unfortunately, these real qualities are not enough for me: since in the end I was not too excited by the finished product. To be honest, this is quite a personal feeling. I am aware that not everybody will agree with me, the best evidence being that 'War Travelers' has garnered more than one award in festivals, especially the Audience Award at the Carthage Film Festival.
That being said, let's see what makes me say that "War Travelers" is not such a good film, at least considering the sum of its parts. Certainly not the first third of the movie, which catches on tolerably well. The very first shot for starters is outright amazing: a vertical tracking shot starting from the night sky streaked by the red drag of passing missiles, getting down along the facade of a ruined building only to end... in the bathroom of an underground apartment. To this technical achievement Joud Said adds the irony of making us discover the film's sixty-odd years old hero in... his bath. From the horror of the missiles to its effects on the derelict building to the harmless show of someone washing himself, the contrast is striking. The scenes that follow are not uninteresting either: there is a somewhat picaresque side to the difficulties encountered by the hero in getting his retirement documents, to the bus ride through the ruins of Aleppo (no commentary but the scary images are sufficient!) as well to the presentation of the bossy corrupt bus driver and the motley crew of the passengers. But this state of grace is not to last: the beginning of the trip out of Aleppo into hostile country is the last segment I totally adhered to.
Things indeed begin to go awry when, after being sandwiched between two combat zones, the passengers of the wayward bus decide to settle down in the empty houses of an abandoned village. Little by little, convention and its inevitable corollary - boredom - set in. From then on, there is nothing else to get your teeth into but a stale confrontation between the good ones and the bad ones, the wickedness of an arch villain assisted by an oily subservient right-hand man, the oft-told birth of a friendship between the patronizing know-it-all wise hero and a yet unaccomplished young man, a running gag repeated over and over again and a litany of formulaic words about life, love and happiness, good and evil. Instead of feeling close to these people trying to rebuild their lives as well as a democratic society (a fine theme), I lost interest in such a superficial treatment of the subject
After an hour and a half, it look as if the movie is coming to a predictable feelgood consensual close when, surprise!, everything is brutally overturned. Two false endings and one real one follow, no fewer, which I let you discover. But this bold move comes too late to straighten the bar. Furthermore why make matters so convoluted after so much time spent aligning clichés?
Well, you have understood it, I do not think 'War Travelers' is a good film as a whole. The fact remains that it contains interesting parts, if only by the reflection it gives of the aftermath of Syrian Civil War. To sum it all up, a mixed bag but not an industrial accident.
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