Oscar-nominated Captain Abu Raed is at once cosmopolitan and pedestrian, an exquisite European-flavored art film that nonetheless tugs on ages-old heart-strings and plays to the weepy sensibilities of sixty-something film-festival mavens.  It feels like a French-flavored Disney film… or a Disney-flavored French film.  All in all, that’s really a pretty decent thing when more and more films are aping Hollywood’s hyper-efficient Spielbergian storytelling style and opting for “realism” over wistful hopefulness.

Jordanian director Amin Matalqa has—thankfully—obviously absorbed much more from Continental cinema than that of the New World.  Right off the bat, the film’s wonderful score evokes Morricone in one of his more pastoral moods, and the carefully-choreographed and nicely-restrained use of crane shots and dolly zooms might remind one of a young Ridley Scott.  (The film is dedicated, in part, to composers Basil Poledouris and Michael Kamen, and includes an explicit nod to Truffaut.) You can be pretty sure that Abu Raed’s ascent into his Amman flat is symbolic, and that the God’s-eye POV of Raed’s city-scape view promises a transcendent conclusion.

But what’s really pleasant about the film is that, in spite of its crafted predictability, we’re never quite sure what’s going to happen from one scene to the next—and this is a brilliant metaphor for Raed’s predicament as well as a masterful cinematic tightrope to walk.

Raed is a widowed janitor at Amman’s international airport.  Approaching retirement age, his life has boiled down to meaningless exchanges with the young slacker who’s apprenticed as his replacement and fond chit-chat with the memory of the late Um Raed.  When he finds an airline captain’s hat in the trash one day and wears it home, the first unpredictable thing happens to him: a boy from the neighborhood becomes convinced, in spite of Raed’s protestations, that the old man really is a pilot.  When the boy recruits his friends as a cheerleading section demanding adventure tales from “the Captain,” Raed decides, against his better judgment, to humor the children.

And there’s the rub: Raed’s judgment really ain’t that good.  So when his better judgment fails and the kids are cruelly let in on the truth of things, Raed is left to fall back on his less-than-better judgment.  The film’s unpredictability is fed by the very small but destructive mistakes that lead tragically down many wrong paths.  What should have been a story of triumph for one small boy, for instance, just keeps getting wronger and wronger.

To be honest, I would have been more comfortable with the story had it not included an almost deus-ex-machina turn from the decidedly appealing Rana Sultan as Nour, an actual pilot whose feminist independence leads her to befriend Raed.  Sure, Raed—and the neighborhood kids, too—needs a savior.  But Nour’s presence seems a bit too convenient, and even condescending.  Still, this is small complaint, only valid if one is intent on wanting this film to be a great one instead of just a really good one.  And I doubt American audiences would ever have even heard of the film if director Matalqa had made it to suit my tastes.

Because Abu Raed is a Jordanian film, it’s easy for me to read the film as political commentary.  On the one hand, Raed wants to do good.  He knows that there are injustices in the world, and he acts in limited ways to intervene as best he knows how.  Eventually, though, he comes to see that he’s nothing but a meddler—and that meddling has consequences.  If he really wants to do good, he’s either going to have to become a killer or finally become the Savior he longs to be.  In essence, the choices are either to keep one’s head in the sand, compromise everything you stand for by defeating evil with evil, or becoming something that we can’t really achieve without some kind of transcendent sacrifice.  Is this a parable about Western interference in the Middle East?  (In an interesting side note, Michael Kamen wrote the score to the 1983’s The Dead Zone, which posited a very different ethicial solution to Raed’s dilemma.)

I can also see how the symbolism might work on a religious level.  Again, Raed wants to save others while failing to recognize how lost he is himself.  Can we really help Africa by sponsoring an AIDS orphan?  Can we really ease homelessness by spending an evening each month at the local soup kitchen?  Can buying a box of candy we don’t need give a child an education?  Does it just make matters worse when the fact is we’re all pretty much janitors in a pilot-hungry world?  We long to be doctors when we’re dying of TB.  Spiritual deliverance requires so much more than weekend warriorism.

Now, I’m not so sure Abu Raed is intended as either political or religious symbolism.  But it’s one of those films that gently reminds you that films are to be taken seriously as art, and that art leaves room for interpretation.  And that, in and of itself, is a very welcome relief.  The real lesson of the film, however, may simply be that storytellers earn the right to tell their tales not by being right or by the telling the “truth,” but simply by telling them well.  Matalqa certainly deserves the Captain’s hat.

Captain Abu Raed is unrated.  Be cautious about interpreting the film’s poster or trailer as flags for a G or PG rating.  While I doubt it would pull a PG-13 for thematic material, this is by no means a children’s film.  You could watch it with your family safely enough, but I think the kids would be bored stiff.

Courtesy of a national publicist, Greg screened a promotional DVD of Captain Abu Raed.