Andrew Steggall | To the Marriage of True Minds / 2010

the impediments

by Douglas Messerli

 

Andrew Steggall (screenwriter, with Abdulkarim Kasid and Hassam Abdulnazzak, and director) To the Marriage of True Minds / 2010 [11 minutes]

 

I think it best to read British director Andrew Steggall’s short film of 2010, To the Marriage of True Minds as a parable of love and a kind of riff on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 rather than seeing it as a small naturalistic drama.

    While it is true that the film begins in a house in Baghdad where two gay men are holed up, trying escape those who have ordered their arrest—perhaps a very real situation—it quickly moves into a poetic fantasy of sorts as one of the men, Falah (Amir Boutrous) reads to his lover Hayder (Waleed Elgadi) Sonnet 116, his friend at first imagining that perhaps Falah, himself, has written these lines:

 

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments; love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand'ring bark

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come.

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom:

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

 

    The persecutors break through the doors, shining lights upon the two hidden men, representing their possible arrest, imprisonment, and death. The screen turns white.

    In the next frame Hayder is being questioned by British authorities attempting to determine his history and possible reasons to grant him asylum. His comments are often dissociative, as he focuses on a small whole in the ceiling, allowing them to follow the passage of day or night: “Then there was a storm and there was no star for a time.” Falah, we are told, grew ill. He couldn’t stop him Hayder explains, he argued with the clerics, believing he should be free.

      The female British interrogator (Jane Bertish) only makes things worse, as she advises him, “Let’s not worry about Falah,” attempting to turn the questions back on Hayder himself. But Hayder becomes even more incoherent, even more troubled about his missing lover. “Where is Falah,” he demands to know, “tell me where he is.” He tries to explain to her what would happen to them, to Falah, having spoken out against the clerics.

      The translator suggests it is now calm in Baghdad, no reason to leave. Hayder demands to know, “When did you leave Iraq?” obviously incredulous that, having lived through his ordeal, someone could say that. The central interrogator attempts once more to return to Hayder himself as the subject: “Why did you leave Baghdad? Why did you come to England?”

      Perhaps not even now feeling safe to explain his love, Hayder remains quiet, as the film’s narrative flashes back to a time when he was a young teenager, having made a paper boat. Another tougher kid comes back, rolling a tire. Or perhaps it is the other way around, Falah with the boat, transfixing the tough street kid with his imaginative creation.

       In any event, the interrogation is now over, with Hayder sitting disconsolately on a bus bench. We have no clue to how the interview turned out, whether or not he has been able to explain to them that he has been forced to leave his homeland because of his love of Falah.

      In a small book he has with him he obviously has looked up a name, and now goes on search of it. It finds what he is seeking, Al Saqi Books, but the store is now closed. He pounds on the glass in frustration, but gradually notices in the front window, a collection of Shakespeare’s Sonnets translated in to Arabic.   

     The reading of the poem continues, as we return to the first encounter between the two boys, the one with the paper boat still imagining that the concrete street is a river, while the boy with the tire fills up the empty inner ring with water, putting the boat upon it. By this time, it is clear, the boys have become friends destined to grow up into the film’s lovers.

       It appears that Hayder, with place to go, wanders the streets all night, falling against a wall as a narrator reads the lines:

 

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

       In the next frame Hayder is in a London park, either Regent’s or Hyde Park, with swans swimming past him. He has once again constructed a paper boat. As he looks in the direction of its course he notices another man who also seems to be moving toward him. He stands and begins walking to greet the man, his beloved Falah, as the two embrace, finally answering the interviewer’s probing question.

      This is a lovely political/poetic fantasy that frankly only a British director such as Steggall might have ever imagined making into a film.

    

Los Angeles, September 11, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2024).