Adetokumboh M'Cormack | Irish Goodbye / 2018

like-minded friends

by Douglas Messerli

 

Matt Feit and Adetokumboh M'Cormack (screenplay), Adetokumboh M'Cormack (director) Irish Goodbye / 2018 [18 minutes]

 

The US film Irish Goodbye begins neither in the US or Ireland, but in Syria, where best friends and perhaps lovers Nizar (Abubakr) and Amir (Youness Ouder) have just pretended to go on a long race only to end up, on Amir’s request, at a meeting of “like- minded friends.”

     It quickly shifts to Los Angeles where Nizar is now working as an Uber driver, picking up a very drunken Eric (Jack Lowe) who admits that he has just successfully achieved an Irish goodbye, when you leave without saying goodbye to anybody.

      Asked if Nizar has ever done such a thing as leaving all your friends without saying goodbye, Nizar gently replies, “I don’t have friends, I just have family,” to which Eric responds, “Well fuck me, you’re no Irishman!” A moment later, Eric is leaning out the window screaming, Nizar attempting to coax him back into the car proper. It’s clear that in the few hours Eric has left in the city before his flight home, he’s ready and willing to party. “Life is not a dress rehearsal!”

      They end up at a concert venture for Cole, a singer evidently Nizar is also fond of. Eric invites him to join him for the concert, but Nizar insists he has to work, besides “I’m not….”

     Eric interrupts, “What gay, homosexual, queer? None of us are.” Before he even knows what’s happening, Nizar has joined Eric at the concert, for after drinks, and a meal, loudly proclaiming about his sexual experiences in a restaurant, at which point Nizar begs him not to be so loud.

      “Oy! Life is loud, Nizar. It’s supposed to get under other people’s skin, not swim around it like some lost sperm in the wild.”

      We quickly discover that the restaurant they’re in is one chosen by Nizar, a spot run, as he points out by Muslims, who Eric proclaims seem to be a “tightly wound” folk.

     “These ‘tightly wound’ people you’re judging escaped from a place I hope you never have to see. They saw friends and family die enduring similar trials.” He quickly tries to explain what’s been happening in Syria since 2011.

       Recognizing that he’s “being a dick,” Eric suggests that after they finish their “fat tush” (fattoush) and that they get out of the place. As they sit on a spot overlooking the city (how they reached it so quickly is inexplicable) Nizar admits that he thinks Eric is quite amazing, but that “Not all of us can live as untethered as you are. Some of us have lives and responsibilities, families. And we can’t just drop everything to live in the single moment the way you do.”

       “Yep, but what are you living for?”

      Before the night is out Eric has invited him into his hotel bedroom, into a long kiss, and into his bed.

     Eric asks after if he’s ever had feelings before for a man, and Nizar recounts what happened the night after he was invited to that gathering of “friends and independent thinkers” with which this short film begins. There was a raid where they grabbed everyone and dragged them. Having captured his friend Amir, they forced him, on the threat of death, to hit him with a heavy piece of concrete. Word spread, and the family was no longer safe. “And I made to here, California, to live with my aunty and my uncle. It’s the typical story of the American dream. Amir always wanted us to be free.”

       Before sunrise, Nizar’s phone rings, and when he reaches for it on the floor he also discovers Eric’s billfold, inside of which is a picture of him with his wife and daughter, leading Nizar to also take an Irish goodbye.

      A cellphone message from Eric admits he should have been more upfront about his life, but also he rhapsodizes about his special night with Nizar, hoping that he finds what he wants from life.

      A written paragraph reminds us after the story has ended, that since 2011 465,000 Syrians have been killed in the fighting between the various forces attempting to occupy it, with over one million injured, and 12 million people displaced.

 

Los Angeles, September 29, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2023).