In a Better World Than This

By Charles Cassady Jr., "Bab'Aziz: The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul" - Cleveland Free Times - Cleveland, OH, USA

Volume 15, Issue 53 - Published May 7th, 2008

Bab'Aziz: The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul: 1:30 p.m. Saturday, May 10 and 1:30 p.m. Sunday, May 11 at Cleveland Museum of Art Lecture Hall

Hollywood bookkeepers are burning out their iBooks calculating how much the direct-to-OMNIMAX editions of Indiana Jones and Speed Racer are bringing into studio cashboxes.

In a better world than this, one or two vast IMAX/OMNIMAX screens and sound systems would be given over to a genuinely hypnotic spectacle, Bab'Aziz: The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul, for a total-immersion experience in the gentle, trance-inducing Sufi brand of Islamic mysticism.

It's reminiscent of the nomadic docu-dramas of Tony Gatlif (Latcho Drom) in its unhurried pace.

Bab'Aziz takes place in the present Mideast desert, yet whenever a piece of modern technology appears - a boom box, a vintage truck, electric lights - it seems an intrusion into a timeless realm that might be any period over the past millennium.

Title character is a blind old man, a Sufi dervish, en route with his "little angel" granddaughter Ishtar to a psalm-and-dance gathering that happens once every 30 years.

Bab'Aziz begins telling a tale of a powerful young prince who becomes transfixed by his own reflection in an oasis pool. It's a tale he is prevented from finishing, but which is doubtlessly autobiographical.

The duo crosses paths with various other interconnected wayfarers - a lovestruck backpacker in search of the girl who has stolen his identity to attend the dervish conclave, a vengeful wastrel who blames a dervish for the ritualistic demise of his pious twin, another young dervish smitten with a married woman in a disappearing palace.

Dialogue is lyrical, often elliptical and cryptic, and it at least partially derives from the poetry of Rumi and other bards and balladeers in the Sufi tradition.

I couldn't claim to comprehend much of what was going on but couldn't look away, such is the visual and aural splendor of the Franco-Iranian-German-Hungarian-UK (whew!) co-production.

The deserts of Tunisia are known to movie viewers primarily as where George Lucas made his pilgrimages to shoot Star Wars flicks.

With no pretensions of being a backdrop to the antics of R2D2 and Jar-Jar Binks, the sandscapes and Seussian rock formations are like a character in themselves, and perfectly complimentary to the actor/singers in the cast - each one so distinctive in their appeal and visage that I truly fear heathen Hollywood agents will descend like King Richard's or George Bush's crusaders, to sack, pillage and abduct Nessim Khaloul or Hossein Panahi for bit roles in Pirates of the Caribbean IV: Jack Sparrow Meets Sinbad.

Watch this lovely film instead. Go against the grain - and with those undulating dunes.