The Dupes is a classic of Arab cinema that is a painful but important watch (Film review)

  

One of a number of pro-Palestinian stickers spotted 

in Hong Kong in recent months

 

The Dupes (Syria, 1972) 

- Tewfik Saleh, director and co-scriptwriter (with Ghassan Kanafani)

- Starring: Mohamed Kheir-Halouani, Abderrahman Alrahy, Bassan Lotfi Abou-Ghazala, Saleh Kholoki 

- Part of the Hong Kong International Film Festival's Restored Classics program

 

Going into the screening of this (restored in 2023) classic of Arab cinema, I knew that -- as per the title of the fourth segment of 2019 Hong Kong film Memories to Choke On, Drinks To Wash Them Down -- It's Not Going to Be Fun.  And, actually, in view of what's been happening in Gaza for some six months now, The Dupes may be an even more upsetting watch in early 2024 because this 1972 film shows how much, and longer, Palestinians have been suffering than many people realize. 

 

Set in Iraq but actually shot in Syria by Egyptian director Tewfik Saleh, The Dupes had its world premiere at Tunisia's Carthage Film Festival in the same year that its co-scriptwriter, Palestinian author-politician Ghassan Fayiz Kanafan, was assassinated, in Beirut.  Kanafan also wrote Men in the Sun, the 1962 novel that The Dupes' story is adapted from.  And both the novel and the film tell the story of three Palestinian refugees seeking to travel from the refugee camps in Iraq, where they cannot find work, to Kuwait, where they hope to make the kind of money it is impossible for them to do in the refugee camps.  

 

The oldest and first of the three to be introduced in The Dupes is Abou Keïss (portrayed by Mohamed Kheir-Halouani), an illiterate farmer who went through the 1948 Nakba (ethnic cleansing of Palestinians) and still pines for the olive trees he once had in his home village.  A generation younger than him, 16-year-old Marwan (essayed by Saleh Kholoki) nonetheless feels the pressure to provide for his family -- now rather than after, as he had hoped, he had finished his schooling.  And in between the two of them in age is Assad (played by Bassan Lofti Abou-Ghazala), a young activist who has had run-ins with the authorities and thinks it would be better for him to flee before he gets arrested and thrown into jail. 

 

After each of them individually fail to agree terms with Iraqi smugglers, all three Palestinians decide to entrust their fate to Abul Al Khaizran (portrayed by Abderrahman Alrahy), a fellow Palestinian who said he would smuggle them on board a truck he would drive across the desert to Kuwait -- for a fee, but less than what the Iraqis said they charged.  (For the record, the bulk of The Dupes focuses on Palestinian individuals and their interactions with one anothers; with such as Zionists barely having any screentime.) 

 

Before they meet one another's acquaintance, Abou Keïss, Assad and Marwan are shown to have already experienced (more than) their (fair) share of deprivations and frustrations.  But while Abul Al Khaizran appears to be in a better position than the desperate trio, it turns out that he, too, has a tragic past; one that has made him actually even more embittered than his fellow Palestinians -- who, unaware of this, decide to trust him with their lives primarily because he hails from the same homeland as them.

A detached observer viewing what transpires in The Dupes will look at Abou Keïss, Assad and Marwan as easily identifiable, as per the film's title, dupes for trusting Abul Al Khaizran with their very lives.  And this especially when one beholds the old truck he drives and hears his plan, which involves hiding the desperate trio for a part of what was already a pretty dangerous journey inside its water tank -- in hellishly hot conditions, given that they would be making their trip in August (the height of summer).  

But the fact of the matter is that Abou Keïss, Assad and Marwan are pretty much in a "Damned if you do, Damned if you don't" situation and it's really a case of dying a slow or quick, extremely painful or still painful, death for all of them.  The sorry fate of Palestinians, refugees, and Palestinian refugees, it seems.  

 

At the same time, there's some hope dangled in front of our trio of protagonists -- and the fact of the matter is that sometimes, it's the hope that can kill you.  To repeat: The Dupes is not a film one goes into a screening of assuming that it'll be a fun watch.  But credit to Tewfik Salleh and co for making it engrossing, involving, cruelly tense and painfully heart-tugging -- and for making this (re)viewer want so much better for the work's (anti-)heroes, against what really are overwhelming odds.

 

My rating for the film: 8.0