British director David Lean's 1962 "intimate epic" Lawrence of Arabia made the actions of an enigmatic, possibly homosexual Anglo/Irish adventurer into a metaphor for how modern warfare can destroy great empires (in this case, the Turkish-ruled Ottoman Empire). A modest new drama from a British director of Arab descent may demonstrate how even a small boy, born into a proud Bedouin tribe, can fulfill his people's gifts for hospitality and the ability to survive one of this planet's most inhospitable hot-spots. In British-born filmmaker Naji Abu Nowar's debut feature Theeb, or Wolf, a young Bedouin lad, too young to shave, finds the physical strength to endure his desert land's daytime furnace of sun and heat. He also makes daring choices and endures great perils that might destroy many an older, more seasoned adult warrior.
The year is 1916. At the same time T.E. Lawrence is building and leading a great Arab army to thwart the Turks in what was then a remote corner of the five-centuries-old Ottoman realm, a young Bedouin, Hussein (Hussein Salameh), attempts to guide a handsome, blond British officer, Edward (Jack Fox), along a desert route favored by Muslim pilgrims to Mecca. Hussein and the young Brit are ambushed by a motley band of brigands. Hussein escapes certain death due to his baby brother's reckless decision to follow their camel tracks. It is here that this fictional adventure departs from the Lawrence script, as Theeb discovers strengths he didn't know he had, including enduring a plunge down a deep desert well and subsequently surviving the company of a mercenary who kills his brother and the Englishman.
If this is all starting to sound a tad far-fetched, it's true that Theeb's adventure is of a kind previously reserved for the minions of the great Disney empire, or perhaps for director Carroll Ballard's great boy adventure, 1979's The Black Stallion. If the movie works, and it mostly does, it's due to the tried-and-true recipe of a fine script, adroitly cast. Theeb himself is a plucky debut by child actor Jacir Eid. In some ways director Nowar's conceit is as if the lead role in the Lawrence tale were taken over by one of the ravishingly cute young Arabs who cling to Lawrence in Lean's tale before perishing in quicksand and desert combat.
The film bonds us with the boy in the first act. The prepubescent Eid, with his wild curly hair, projects the reckless charisma of the young Sal Mineo as he defied a British-imposed peace in Otto Preminger's bloated epic Exodus. We're embedded with this boy who has no politics, who takes up the gun only after cruel men have pushed him to the brink, and who will act only to redeem his family's honor after futilely trying to follow their ancient profession guiding strangers across the desert.
Ultimately, Nowar has neatly combined a brave boy's coming-of-age tale, in which his own maturity comes tragically to fruition precisely when the forces of a brutal war conspire to deprive him of his beloved older brother, with the complicated awakening of an ancient people in what we in the West refer to somewhat patronizingly as "the Holy Land." When last we see him, Theeb has proudly turned into a lone wolf, astride a camel heading towards a seemingly infinite horizon. A Western-raised Arab filmmaker has constructed a mythic tale for his people, an epic "Eastern" whose inhabitants will likely spend a great deal of this new century finding their own special destiny.