In a sentenceLawrence of Arabia from the point of view of the kid nobody thought to ask
The Ottoman desert, 1916, in the middle of the First World War. Theeb (Jacir Eid Al-Hwietat), a Bedouin boy whose father, the tribe’s sheikh, has recently died, is being raised by his older brother Hussein (Hussein Salameh Al-Sweilhiyeen), who is teaching him to shoot and to draw water. One night a British officer, Edward (Jack Fox), arrives at the camp with an Arab companion (Marji Audeh) and a locked wooden box he will not open, asking for a guide to a well on the old pilgrims’ road to Mecca, close to the new railway. Hussein is told to take them. Theeb, forbidden to come, follows on foot and is found too far out to be sent back. The road has been empty since the railway came, and the men who once guided pilgrims along it have had to find other work.
Naji Abu Nowar’s first feature is a desert adventure seen from the height of a Bedouin boy, and it is tense, plain and well made. It dawdles in the middle and the score sounds borrowed, but the boy is worth the trip.
Most desert films are about the men who cross it. Naji Abu Nowar’s first feature is about the child who tags along, and it stays at his height for the whole hundred minutes. Theeb, whose name is Arabic for wolf, is a Bedouin boy in the Ottoman desert in 1916, the youngest son of a dead sheikh, and when a British officer arrives at the camp wanting a guide to a well on the old pilgrim road, his brother Hussein goes and Theeb follows. Much of what he sees he does not understand. Neither, for a while, do we, and Abu Nowar and his co-writer Bassel Ghandour are right not to help.
The cast are not professional actors, and Jacir Eid Al-Hwietat, as Theeb, is the kind of child you only get that way. He does not do anything. He watches his brother, he watches the officer’s locked wooden box, he watches the men who come later, and the film trusts the watching to carry it. Hussein Salameh Al-Sweilhiyeen’s Hussein is gentle and a little exasperated, lowering the boy into a well on a rope so he learns where the water is, and the early scenes between them are the warmest in the film.
Wolfgang Thaler shoots the Jordanian desert as somewhere people live and work. There are wide shots, because there is no avoiding them, but the camera is more often low and close: a rope going down into dark water, a camel’s leg, the boy’s face lit by a fire while the adults argue above him.
What they find at the well we will leave to the film, except to say it is the moment the outing becomes a thriller, and a good one. There is a night sequence in which the boy is alone among rocks with gunfire somewhere beyond them, and Thaler keeps the frame nearly black with only the child’s eyes in it, and Jerry Lane’s score stops. We were frightened for him in a way films with children in danger rarely manage, because nothing in the staging promised he would be all right. It is done with a rifle, a rock face and a boy who does not know where his brother is.
The second half is a two-hander, and we will not say how it comes about. Hassan Mutlag Al-Maraiyeh, credited only as the Stranger, is the other half of it, a man Theeb has every reason to fear and no way to do without, and the two circle each other in close quarters for a long time. Al-Maraiyeh plays him with neither menace nor charm, which is more unnerving than either, and most of their scenes are played at a murmur over a few feet of sand.
It does dawdle. Rupert Lloyd, who edited as well as produced, is patient to a fault in the middle third, and there is a run of walking, resting and looking at the horizon in which the film seems to be waiting for something it has already told us is coming. Lane’s score is the other borrowed thing: slow strings and guitar in the manner of the American western, telling us where the film learned its shape at moments when the pictures were managing on their own.
The obvious ancestor is Lawrence of Arabia, which is set in the same war and the same sand, and Abu Nowar knows it: the railway, the officer with a mission he will not explain, the Arabs who are useful to him. What he has done is turn the camera round. The Englishman passes through the frame, and the people he was hired to look past are the ones we stay with. The box is just a box, until a child asks what is in it and nobody answers.
It is a 12 certificate, and a child of Theeb’s age could watch it, though there are two or three moments they will not forget quickly. See it on as large a screen as you can find; on a sofa the long walks are longer and the dark scenes darker. The last twenty minutes are as good as anything in it, and they end without a speech, which we were glad of.
Most critics like Theeb, and they like it for the same things. The reviews lean positive by a clear margin, and the praise settles on the desert: Wolfgang Thaler’s cinematography is named again and again, and several critics note that the landscape is shot plainly rather than as a postcard. Jacir Eid’s performance as the boy draws almost as much approval, usually described as natural or expressive. Many reviews call it an old-fashioned adventure, and the First World War setting and the passing of Bedouin life are treated as the film’s real subject.
The reservations are about pace and story. A handful of critics find the narrative thin or meandering; The AV Club calls it simplistic and poorly paced, and Consequence finds it underdeveloped despite its beauty. Variety’s one complaint is that the score sounds too Western, and Eye for Film thinks viewers could use more context. The spread is fairly narrow: most scores sit in the high seventies and eighties, with a single outright dissenter.
Parkinson finds the film smart, enthralling and intelligently exciting. He particularly praises its confident exploration of the passing Bedouin nomadic way of life.
Read the full review →Weissberg calls the film a classic adventure and praises its well-told story and vivid performances. He especially singles out the stunning Jordanian landscapes, while noting that the score feels a little too Western.
Read the full review →The critic praises Theeb as a reverent, accomplished coming-of-age story and an arthouse gem. They single out the cinematography, score, and lead performance for making its desert setting and young protagonist compelling.
Read the full review →The critic finds the film austere and beautiful, praising its rare subaltern perspective and empathetic treatment of its characters. They also single out its subtle, nuanced handling of cultural contrasts and the frontier setting.
Read the full review →Abele calls the film a winning, tense coming-of-age adventure. He especially praises its desert cinematography and sound design, along with Jacir Eid’s natural performance.
Read the full review →The critic presents the film as a classic adventure, praising its eye-searing landscapes and fascinating historical setting. The review highlights the tale of innocence lost, with a young boy escorting a British officer through the Jordan desert during the First World War.
Read the full review →
Lawrence of ArabiaThe same war and sand, seen from the officer’s side rather than the boy’s.
WalkaboutTwo children, one desert and a guide they cannot read; Roeg is stranger and crueller.
WadjdaA Saudi girl wants a bicycle; another child’s-eye film that trusts its lead to look.
TimbuktuSissako’s desert is modern and armed, and his patience with faces is much the same.
The Proposition · not reviewed yetAn outback western with the same flies, heat and refusal to make the frontier pretty.
