Canadian Film Forum

adrianagrec · Junior Data inscrierii: 22/Mar/2011 Mesaje: 2

SABAH

This film presents not only a love story between a Muslim and a Canadian but also presents things and habits of the Muslims. Title of this movie is in fact the name of the main character, Sabah who is a single woman, immigrant from Syria and who lives in Toronto with her family. Even if in film, we see a prohibited love story between Sabah and Stephen who is a foreigner I think that in fact the real theme of this movie is the culture and the habits of the Muslims and the manner in which they live in a foreign country. For Muslims their rules and their religion are very important even if they are living in another country. In film, we see things that are specific to their culture in numerous moments. For example, the music that we hear is Arabic, the fact that Sabah and women’s generally do not have the permission to work. Also women’s must wear that veil on the head when they are in public, they can’t eat pork, they can’t marry with a foreigner and for girls their fathers or brothers decide with whom they can marry. In their society, men’s decide everything and the women’s don’t have the permission to do nothing.
Sabah has 40 and at her age, she is single, she lives with her mother, and she does not have a job because his brother Majid takes care of the whole family. Sabah falls in love with a Canadian but she must hide this relation because she knows that her family would not agree with this. In the end, she decided to confront her family and she tells them the truth. Her brother does not accept this but Sabah convinces him that this family must change. When Majid wants to oblige her niece Souhaire to marry with Mustafa she tells him that she” wants to fall in love” not to be obliged by her family to marry with who they want. Souhaire wants to be like an ordinary girl and she wants to fall in love with a Canadian boy because „they know how to threat a woman”. Sabah considered herself „as much Canadian as she is Arabic” because even if she is a Muslim she lives for many years in Canada. Even it’s a Canadian film we see that are a lot of things from Arabic culture but in contrast we see things from Canadian culture, how they eat, what they wear, places from Toronto and there is a big difference between the Canadian way to live and the Muslim way to live. This movie shows one more time that Canada is a mixture of cultures, it is a place where can live people of different cultures with different habits, with different beliefs. This film has a specific structure because the movie starts in the same way how it finishes it: all the members of the family are together for celebrating Sabah birthday, Souhaire and his mother dance belly dance with the mention that in the end of the movie the atmosphere changed and everyone is happy, Sabah is married, Majid and his wife are also together Souhaire has a relation with Mustafa and now all the women’s dance. Even if Sabah is a Muslim in the end, her family accepts her relation with a Canadian and her brother let her work with him. There are in the movie scenes very amusing like the one in which Mustafa comes to meet Souhaire and she feign to be a real Muslim woman even she is born in Canada and she does not respect all the traditions.
In the movie are many close-ups, concentrates on the face, especially on the face of Sabah, maybe because her hair its cover by that veil and her face and her eyes become more important. The music in this movie is especially Arabic music and it is used to underline their traditions like the moments when the women’s dance or when they smoke. It’s very interesting the fact that even if Sabah is a Muslim Stephen doesn’t make jokes or he doesn’t laugh of her.That means that he respect their traditions and what they wear, more than that he bought a book to read about culture and he even said that he will convert to their religion if her family will accept him.
This movie can be a lesson of multiculturalism and a new perception about the relation between two people of different cultures. Canada is the country of the multiculturalism, a country were a Canadian knows to respect the other even if he has another culture or religion.