The Miracle of Grain

Columbia Pictures founder Harry Cohn did not manage his studio by the seat of his pants. No one ever saw him fly by them either. But legend has it that his tushee was the decider on whether to release a movie. Too cheeky a response meant no go.

The Secret of Grain, a 2007 film written and directed by Abdel Kechiche, got a five cheek rating from me, which means I bailed at the 60 minute mark with 90 still on the clock. Many critics, including the usually reliable Roger Ebert, have hailed this film as a gem, however flawed. For me, the story telling was fatally flawed and, sorry, but I don’t see a gem.

That said, I very much liked the idea of seeing a heartfelt story about the trials of being a Muslim of North African origin in contemporary France (Kechiche’s family is from Tunisia). We Americans don’t get much about the humanity of Islamic people these days, let alone sympathetic portrayals of their struggle to live. It was a welcome respite from the ubiquitous post-9/11 jihadist cartoon characters who bedevil our society since the Russians got capitalism.

The hero of the story is Slimane Beiji (Habib Boufares), a North African immigrant to France. Early on, he is laid off from his construction job of 35 years because he is not productive enough for his profit-driven bosses.

We sense Beiji is crushed by his loss but there’s no place on his beautifully sad, deeply lined face for any more suffering to register. We get that he will continue to stoically endure but the game’s over for him even though the final out has not been recorded. I felt sympathy for Beiji and all immigrants swimming upstream in an alien culture.

At this point, the plot stopped moving forward and slipped into a long series of slow, low-impact, overly long takes. The director made a choice to let the story unfold randomly and organically as life does and I get that. It’s one of the things that I love about deeply personal, hand-made films. But sometimes, as with Grain, I get lost with this technique and lose the emotional pulse of the story, never a good thing. And, suddenly, there I was at 2.5 cheeks and numbing out.

I hoped for renewed engagement when the focus finally shifted to Slimane’s extended family. Surprisingly, the patriarch of the clan isn’t at the center of their world. Mostly, he’s not there, almost as if he was already dead, a respected memory. He does not join dozens of family members gathering at his ex-wife’s house for the matriarch’s legendary couscous, perhaps the only Tunisian custom which has survived the family’s assimilation. This dish is kvelled over by all the adults at the table in the same way that Jews wax poetic about mom’s brisket or chicken soup, love you can eat, the last refuge of those caught in the ebb tide between cultures.

Food has given us a lot of great films like The Big Night, Mostly Marta and Babette’s Feast. Even not so great food-based films like Tortilla Soup work because they dish up the comforts of hearth and home, and how can you miss with that?

Well, for starters, by using a hand-held camera for 15-20 minutes without a break. This odd, extended ultra-close up technique at the couscous lovefest gave the director a way to make us feel physically present at the meal, no question about that. But he left me embedded there without making me feel like a guest. I felt lost again, unable to understand who was who and how things fit together, and why I should care.

The Secret of Grain had jumped with both feet from its stark, singular focus on Slimane to a boisterous multi-generational family dinner scene. It felt like a tropical rain storm dropping suddenly from a leaden sky with astonishing force, a refreshing change at first which quickly flooded the streets. And this is when I gave up and left the theater.

Sounds cranky, I know, but that was my experience. By contrast, take Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married, for example. This was also a meandering tale with a cast of dozens of extended family members and friends. Demme, also like Kechiche, puts viewers in the extremely up-close and personal mode too many times, often around food. But it wasn’t long before I found his technique engaging and never quite got there with Kechiche.

There are a couple of reasons for this. Demme quickly got his viewers involved with the main characters and their dramatic conflicts. When he used ultra close-ups, they were part of a creative mixture of shots and set-ups, and the editing had a crisp rhythm which gave shape to the blur of so many quick impressions.

Kechiche has said that he admires Yasujiro Ozu, the great Japanese director who made a series of elegant black and white films in the 40’s and 50’s (Early Summer, Late Autumn, et.al) about the impact of modernity on a traditional family. I can see where Kechiche works similarly sympathetic emotional territory in his film, and his deliberately spare, low-drama style of story telling also echoes Ozu.

But I don‘t think this guy is as skilled an artist, and he doesn’t use his cinematic tools as effectively. Ozu’s films are a series full of beautiful, strategically composed shots, each designed to awaken or refresh the viewer’s perceptual palette and to guide him or her into the emotional content of the next scene. The Secret of Grain just isn’t built this way, not for me, anyway.

While stuff certainly happens in Grain, and some of it’s great, for me there never was a substantive dramatic there there. In some ways this film felt like the work of a gifted grad student at NYU film school, perhaps a little too in love with what he’s shot to make cuts that would make the film more accessible. Look, he’s an artist, and he needs to do what he is compelled to do. That’s what enriches cinema and the world. I just don’t think Grain was very good film making.