Joshua Taj Bozeman

Just finished THE INFIDEL, one of the selections from the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival. FANTASTIC movie. Hilarious, sweet, touching, well acted, all of the above and more.

Omid Djalili plays the liberal-minded British muslim, Mahmud. He drinks every now and then, he swears, he doesn’t go to the mosque very often, he seems to be pretty laid back on the subject of religion. From the opening scene of Mahmud watching his favorite singer, 80′s glam rocker, Gary Page (a spoof on the metrosexual 80′s rock stars), it’s clear that this is going to be hilarious. Mahmud’s young daughter walks around the house spouting what sounds like terrorist rhetoric (it’s cute when the kids do it), and his wife seems to have the same laid back attitude about islam. Their son seems to be a bit more into the whole religion thing, if only to marry his sweetheart, whose mother has just married a muslim extremist and whose blessing they need to get married.

Mahmud’s mother has just died, and while going thru her house to pack things up, he sees adoption papers with his name on them. Through a very funny argument with a records clerk played by Miranda Hart (Not Going Out, Miranda), he discovers he was actually born jewish- adopted by muslim parents. He soon learns who his birth father is (by wrestling away the records from Miranda Hart, whose character is in a wheelchair), and is on his way to see him. Turns out, he’s on his deathbed and papa’s rabbi demands he be more jewish before he can see him. This leads to a very funny series of events where Mahmud befriends a jewish cab driver played by Richard Schiff, a rather non-committed jew in some aspects, though very religious in other ways. He tries to teach him the basics, from the dancing to the proper way to say “oy.” The two men become close friends, leading up to Mahmud attending a bat mitzvah where he’s forced to tell an old fashioned comical jewish story. All the while, he’s dreading the arrival of his son’s girlfriend’s new stepfather (the possible terrorist supporting cleric.)

I’ll leave the plot there, needless to say we get most funny for the first 3/4 of the film, some touching moments mixed in, and at the end it gets a bit serious with the film’s message that, well- we are who we are. We’re not all perfect religiously, we’re not all perfect people in general even, but we should embrace the various aspects of ourselves and do the best we can with it.

Great acting here by everyone. Djalili is hilarious as usual. He’s genius just standing in the shower scrubbing himself and yelling “jew, jew, jew,” as if he can clean the jew off him somehow. Schiff is nice here, also playing the funny man but doing his best to let Djalili shine throughout. And he does.

There’s a scene in the mosque, Mahmud is going to tell the imam that he’s jewish, but instead the imam presumes he’s going to tell him that he’s gay. No problem, the imam says…the koran is VERY strict on this subject, but islam is about interpretation no? The koran says the punishment for this is for brimstone to rain down from the sky, but I believe that brimstone has already rained down inside of you. And that should be good enough for allah, right? That’s satire at its best, my friends.

Very nice directing here, and the look of the film is fantastic. There’s a scene after things have gone a bit downhill for Mahmud, where he’s walking through the stalls from vendors that have been taken down, a piece of cloth is whipping in the wind as the vendor pulls it down for the day, it’s as well done visually as any scene from any number of epic films in history.

The music is brilliant throughout the film, the couple of songs from fictional rocker Gary Page are actually really catchy…I’ll admit it, I found myself trying to find these songs online. There’s some great stuff in the score that punctuates the little acts of jewishness, and those pieces scream “jew!” all over the place…the clarinet and all, it’s wonderful.

Highly recommend the film. It was a hilarious adventure they may have needed to be edited down a bit, but the pacing is nice, Djalili is perfect, you get some touchy feely stuff, you get comedy, you leave the film feeling great about life in general, 9/10 all the way. Maybe even 9.5.

You can watch The Infidel and many (all?) of the 2010 Tribeca film festival movies online or OnDemand.
http://www.tribecafilm.com/