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).
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