The Insult

The Insult is a 2017 French and Lebanese film directed by Ziad Doueir.  It was released in most US theaters in 2018.  The film is set in present day Beirut, when a contractor and his crew is going through a neighborhood to update buildings to code.  Unbeknownst at the start of the movie, the contractor is a Palestinian refugee.  While checking the neighborhood, his crew realizes that there was one house that had some illegal gutters and drains.  While trying to convince the home owner to allow him to fix it, the two get heated, leading the contractor to then insult the homeowner, a Lebanese Christian. 

The insult then leads to a series of events, ultimately bringing the two to court.  The media centralizes around the build of the trial, creating a social explosion between both extreme sides.  The two, Tony and Yasser, the original people involved are forced to reflect on their values and troubled past, which jades their values.  Some of the revelations the two face during the trial, allow both parties to begin to understand where each other is coming from.

The Insult is a movie that raises questions not only on Beirut's approach to the refugee crisis as well as what other countries take on with their approaches.  At times, especially towards the end of the trial, it seems to be taking on a bit of the Law and Order style, of trying to look and dig deeper into different approaches to the trial, however, unlike Into the Fade, which picked up the Golden Globe nomination, it broached far more topical questions of refuges, the roles media can play in high profile cases.  It also looks at a nation's idea of a more turbulent past. 

There are no easy answers or solutions to this trial, and the movie takes a sweeping approach to the two extreme views in both, and tries to bring forth a middle ground.  The added bonus, is that the movie exceeds in presenting many of the gray areas that create and promote challenges and speed bumps in the process, and at times, there may be no good answer, other than a simple apology.

While the movie is high in it's political charge, the questions it raises, and histories it presents, one of the well achieved aspects, is that in many circumstances and scenes, the movie is not super pushy in presenting one side as the correct side.  It certainly makes the movie far more relateable and relevant.  There may not be any good, better, or fully right or fully wrong presented approaches.  There are a lot of grey areas when it comes to many of the differences, and it raises valid points in the prejudices that we me bring to the table/