Film review: Four Lions (Director: Christopher Morris)

A comedy about Islamist suicide bombers? The idea will strike many as strange at best, irresponsible maybe, possibly even perverse to some. How can one laugh about those who kill out of hatred, murdering civilians for what they consider their beliefs, their faith, their ideology? Is there a funny side to mass murder and terrorism? It is an argument that is not new, it was presented, and has been to this day and with some justification, against Chaplin's The Great Dictator or Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be, brilliant satires about Nazi Germany. While one could argue about the fact that both directors could not know the full extent of the atrocities commited when the films were made in the early 1940s, no such excuse can be made for Christopher Morris. He knows what Islamist terrorism is and what damage it has done. Nonetheless he has chosen to make this film. Why? He has talked about the liberating force of laughter. So is this all escapism in the end?

Far from it. Four Lions is a hilarious funny film, a farce at times, a biting satire at others, but one which never loses sight of what this is actually about. When we laugh, we never belittle the tragedy, the laughter liberates us to open our eyes, not close them. The ridiculousness of it all makes it even harder to understand why people have to die.

Four Lions focusses on a little makeshift terror cell in London two of which set out for a traning camp in Pakistan only to return having failed completely. On their return they need to save their face so they pretend they've been trusted with a mission which for the time being consists of nothing more than "blowing something up". There is tension between Omar, the group leader, and Barry, an Englishman converted to Islam, over control and over what mission to perform. Barry wants to bomb a mosque, in order to make the moderate Muslims rise up, a plan soon discarded by the rest of the group who after many more and more grotesque arguments settle on an attack on the london Marathon.

Their attempts to plan the attacks are amateurish at best, the ideas they come up with often ludicrous - such as fitting crows with explosives in order to detonate them above targets, their arguments have the dynamic, structure and effiency of a rollercoaster ride and reveal the ridiculousness, the grotesque absurdity of the underlying ideology, of the gap between pretense and effect. They may consider themselves heroes and future martyrs but they spend much of their time bickering just like a group of pubescent schoolkids. Their cause is about little more than their egos, about power, mostly within the group, about creating scapegoats.

Morris succeeds in achieving a sharp, poignat, painful satire of totalitarian ideologies, providing simple answers which may not make any sense but relieve their followers of the need to think for themselves. The irony is that the simple is not simple at all but as long as you refuse to face the absurdity of it you can still go along nicely.

One of the most harrowing aspects of the film is the normalcy particularly of Omar's family. this is a perfectly modern Muslim family, a loving home, a relationship based on equality - a stark contrast to Oar's brother, fundamentalist muslim who refuses to be even in the same room as a woman. yet ist is not this reactionary man who goes the way of violence but the modern, seemingly moderate Muslim whose mission is surported, not fanatically, but cheerfully by this totally normal family. One of the many absurdities of this film and one that s hardly bearable.

The film is full of hilarious scenes, slapstick, farce, the comedy of words, but the abyss is never far. One moment, the wouldbe terrorists run in funny movements trying to balance the explosives they're carrying, the next one of them is blown up. He is not the last casualty because even as the absurdity of their actions dawns on some of them, particularly Omar, they do not find the strength to stop. Failure is not an option, losing face is not an option, s they must continue no matter what.

When the last detonation has passed, there is an eerie silence, a quiet that is hardest to bear. the laughter is over, there is nothing left to laugh about. It is this silence, this sense of none of this being a game that brings the audience crashing to the ground in the realisation that as hilarious, ludicrous, absurd as all of this is, it is, first and foremost, extremely serious. It is this balace, this never losing sight of the consequences that makes this film truly great. No tearjerking pathos, no earnest portayal of terrorism could cause the devastation of this laughter.