Monsieur Ibrahim

Monsieur Ibrahim

Monsieur Ibrahim

This is surprisingly the one of the worst movie I've watched in last six months. Surprise ,cos IMDb point is 7.5,Omer Sharif is on cast.I thought Turkish Muslim supermarket owner Ibrahim is pedophilia...but no he is so good man that he gives Jewish guy to read Koran.This movie stinks of religious propaganda and surprisingly is a French film.I think movie made to sell Islamic countries.Anyway stupidity not only what they try to em- pose ,film itself consist of many illogical things like Ibrahim shuts dawn his shop to take the boy to Turkey with a tiny car from France to Turkey.Actually he buys this car for him.He catches him stealing but not acts etc.It is total time wasting to watch this movie.

In François Dupeyron's Monsieur Ibrahim, a Golden Globe nominee for Best Foreign Film, a weak script does an injustice to the considerable talents of veteran actor Omar Sharif and expressive newcomer Pierre Boulanger. Set in the Rue Bleue section of Paris in 1963, a home to working class Jews and prostitutes, the film celebrates the friendship between Monsieur Ibrahim (Sharif), an elderly Muslim grocer, and Momo (Boulanger), a 15-year old Jewish teenager, but the relationship feels contrived and inorganic. Momo's father (Gilbert Melki) is a depressed Holocaust survivor and the boy's only friends are the prostitutes that line the streets outside of his home, and Myriam, a freckled redhead Jewish girl who lives in the same building but is not ready for his advances. Momo, however, is incongruously brimming with self-confidence and an upbeat disposition that belies his troubled home life. Underscored by a brassy soundtrack and 60s rock music, he breaks his childhood piggy bank and becomes initiated by a prostitute named Sylvie (Anne Suarez), a buxom blonde whom he tells he is sixteen. As the boy's father continues to antagonize his son by comparing him unfavorably to his estranged brother Paulie, the Arab grocer down the street takes on the role of a father substitute. The wise and kindly Ibrahim overlooks Momo's stealing from him and encourages the teenager to read The Koran, his holy book, expounding religious-based epigrams that, despite Sharif's charismatic presence, sound forced and pedantic. We do not learn much about Ibrahim's personal life except that he was once married and is a Sufi, a mystical offshoot of Islam. Seemingly out of character, he shows no compassion for Momo's troubled father, advising the boy to feed his father cat food, pretending it is paté and gives him stale bread to take home for dinner. He also overcharges actress Brigitte Bardot (Isabelle Adjani), who is in the neighborhood to make a film, to make up for all the things that Momo has stolen. When Momo's father abandons him, leaving him a note telling him that he wasn't "cut out to be a father," the boy doesn't shed a tear, and also rejects his mother who comes looking for him after a fifteen-year absence. Instead, Ibrahim "adopts" the boy, buying him a brand new red convertible, and taking him to his homeland in Turkey. The journey becomes a travelogue, with scenes of dusty hills that look as if they were lifted from an Abbas Kiarostami film. When they reach Istanbul, Ibrahim takes the boy to an Orthodox church, a Catholic church, and a Muslim mosque where he walks blindfolded so he can "open his senses," and watches the famous Whirling Dervishes, a mystical dance performed by Muslim priests in a prayer trance to Allah. Sadly, he is not also taken to a Jewish synagogue. Although Ibrahim is a Sufi, the only discussion of Sufism is a dictionary reference to an "inner religion that is not legalistic." There is no discussion of why Sufism is unique, nor is there any dialogue between the two friends about the tenets of each other's faith. Indeed, the film ignores the close connection between Sufi mystical traditions and the Jewish Cabala, and the fact that Turkey was one of the few countries that provided a sanctuary for Jews escaping from Nazi oppression during the 1940s. While Monsieur Ibrahim is not without its charming moments, I found it ultimately unsatisfying, and was angered that the boy turns away from his own religion without giving a second thought to his heritage or his father who suffered through the Holocaust. Dupeyron said that he wanted to make a film about tolerance and bringing people together, yet he settles for a sentimentality that fails to enhance our understanding of either religion or forward a reconciliation of two great cultures.

This overly ambitious and presumptuous film is attempting to answer the Arab/israeli desire for light to be instantly answered.. Cheap propogandas don't fare well and this film is an insult to avid movie-goers and the public. Starring Omar Sharif needs more than a forgotten movie star from the 60's to keep it intriguing. Plots like this suggest nothing new and for those who have seen Madame Rose with Simone Signoret (A jewish prostitute who adopts a muslim boy in Paris) will be sick and tired of regurgitated themes such as this piece of provincial rag. An Arab (Omar sharif) takes a jewish boy (Pierre Boulanger) under his wing and teaches him about the simplicity of life. Very Predictable and you all know the rest. The plot is too self-consciously cute and tries not to be political but it bubbles beneath the surface attempting to send a message to the world. This offers too little for the average audience and extremely little entertainment value. Movie buffs: this film is ultimately offensive and a waste of time. I myself am not a fan of Sharif and find him over-rated and personally he drives me to drink. His perfume line years ago was a desperate stunt to pay his debts after gambling his entire money away in casinos.. this film yearns to be provocative especially after 9/11 but it won't succeed and will not re-catapult Sharif back in the hollywood scene again. This movie should come with a warning: Turn off brain before viewing and get ready to revisit your dinner. 1/2 a * out of *****

This film manifests all that is degenerate about the "coming of age" genre: saccharine sentimentality, numbing cliché, jarringly unsubtle plot devices. Don't be fooled by apparent spiciness of a movie about a sixteen-year-old boy's experimentation with prostitutes. This movie is entirely conventional. And you won't be able to redeem your one-and-a-half hours by just listening to the soundtrack. It's crap too. All of the dramatic tension is relieved after forty minutes, which means that the film wanders aimlessly and pointlessly for another forty. Omar Sharif's commentary on the DVD is similarly inane. There is really nothing to be said in favour of this movie along any dimension.

" Monsieur Ibrahim " is a touching film which tells the tale of Moses, played by Pierra Boulanger, a 14 year old Jewish boy living in Paris during the 1960'. Abandoned to the ambivalent care of his father by an equally absent mother, Moses strays into the world of the Teenager and yearns to enjoy his budding maturity. Befriended by 'the Arab' played by Omar Sharif, who is a Muslim, the innocent teen is instructed, advised and counseled on the secrets of life. Somewhere between the Koran and the amorous attentions of Parisian prostitutes, the boy learns that shoplifting and sex are incidental. What is confusing is the fact the director and his film were not attacked, burned, vilified and morally assaulted by outraged Feminist groups from European countries and America. Had this film been about a fourteen year old girl, having sex with a half dozen adults, then befriended by a foreign older man who then adopts, and takes her East, Christian groups would have assailed it as child *. But as it was a boy, the film garners little of their attention and slips quietly into film history as a blending of cultures and the honoring of a special tradition

Storytelling is not a simple affair. Unless all you want to do is fill space, it is not enough to just take one or two (usually two) characters and draw them as they draw their situations. I know that some matchbook writer schools say to do just that, but our imaginations need more to get engaged. I do not know the book from which this originates, but I am rather sure that it didn't take the storytelling shortcuts we see in the movie. In fact, I think we can reconstruct the book's backbone from artifacts we have left, strewn throughout the movie. We have a bookish father, a rather serious scholar who is trapped in a menial job, probably in a book-related enterprise. We can infer as well that his Jewishness is what sets the barrier to advancement and produces the later termination and suicide. We have a decidedly non- bookish son, it seems someone actually dull. So instead of the father passing wisdom from his books to the son, we have a disconnect. The son is the narrator, more precisely the narrator is tied to the son's vision. Because that vision is broken, the narrator is untrusted, and we see two versions of a story after the piggybank affair: one in which he remains poor and another in which he lives a fantasy with a prostitute. That untrusted nature pervades the story itself: there is a story about an older son, someone whose existence even the shopkeeper acknowledges. We in fact see a photo of two children. But in a remarkable scene, the mother returns and the boy presents his own, contrary, story while she speaks similarly. So at root, it is a book about books: The "Jewish" (and western) books don't connect. In fact, they are sold to procure sex. The Koran does connect, and much is made of our boy's receiving and adopting it. It connects not because if its intrinsic content, but because a human (a "sufi" shopkeeper) created the bond. Along the way, we see our otherwise poor student become a master teacher when helping pass the driver's test. So we'd have a book about warring books, connecting with the reader through personal metaphor just as the story within connects the personal through books. I call this "folding," and imagine it to have been the construction of the original book. But none of that is here. All of it has been washed away and replaced with actor's mannerisms, disconnected scenarios and cheap sentiment. Sharif should have known better, especially if he understood the story. Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

I went to see the movie after reading very good reviews during last Venice Film Festival. It was generally described as a fairytale about tolerance and friendship - ant that's what it is. A fairytale Paris quarter, with fairytale 'putaines', a wise middle aged shopkeeper, a smart teenager - everyday life goes on with a little happiness, a little tragedy, nice period music, simple happy philosophy. The second half of the movie goes on-the-road - in a fairytale Turkey, though definitely more realistic than Paris. Omar Sharif is good, and Pierre Boulanger is even better. This film is perfect to spend a cheerful evening and it is a little joyful lesson on religious tolerance and friendship.

. . .and, by the way, I am of Irish descent. But the script is so one-sided that it left me wondering. The boy's father abandons him out of pure cowardice. The boy's mother appears briefly, then inexplicably disappears. His home is a claustrophobic nightmare of books. All of the openness, space, and light is associated with the Sharif character. The lad ends up rejecting his Jewish heritage completely, adopting an Arabic variant, and contentedly running a corner grocery store from 6:00 a.m to midnight. The bland acceptance of this piece of subtle, but clear, propaganda - pretty much what I would expect from the current climate in France - leaves me puzzled.