You can’t afford to miss this movie

The prophet

Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.

Gibran Khalil Gibran

Friends who were visiting in November suggested I watch a movie called ‘Searching for Sugar Man’. I forgot about that until I had the chance to scan the movie choices on an Emirates flight to China yesterday. It was a particularly bumpy flight, so rather than worrying about wings and sturdy fuselage -as we do- I decided to see what the movie was about and pass a couple of hours of distraction to help me dose off. Or so I thought.

I was not prepared for what I witnessed.  There were scenes were I was at the edge of my seat, gasping with incredulity. Others had me bawling, making the Chinese man sitting next to me pass me a tissue from his meal tray. It was a roller coaster ride echoing the plane’s ups and downs and sideways lurches.  It was the movie that you don’t see every day, every year, every decade.  And it was a documentary.  Its truth and its subject matter, the story, the filming, the skillful portrayal of so bizarre a turn of events makes you wondered at first if any of it was true. Yet it is, and truth as we often hear, can be stranger than fiction.

What I loved about the movie that you as a reader simply have to go see and tell people you care about to go see, is the raw honesty with which the story was told.  The contrasts that were so beautifully highlighted. The likability of the characters of the real life protagonists. Most of all, the uniqueness of the film is the tide of emotions that it evokes in the audience.  A barrage of feelings was washing over me, like the varying intensity of spray hitting me in the face from being close to a rocky beach beaten by a rough sea.  A wave of happiness, followed closely by sadness, disappointment, hope, wonder, anger, joy again, then surprise, sadness one more time, peace, inspiration, faith, and the final state of being of philosophically resigning to this being ‘life’.

“Nobody is a prophet in his own land”. One hears this a lot. But one lives it while watching this amazing gem of a movie.

You really do have to watch it.