LE GRAND VOYAGE d: Ismaël Ferroukhi
Le Grand voyage (2004)
Direction and screenplay: Ismaël Ferroukhi. Cast: Nicolas Cazalé, Mohamed Majd, Jacky Nercessian, Ghina Ognianova
The French-Moroccan Le Grand voyage, winner of the best first film award at the Venice Film Festival, is a well-intentioned, well-directed, and extremely well-acted road movie that is less satisfying that it should be because writer-director Ismaël Ferroukhi’s screenplay fails to strike a balance between the learning needs of both young and old, religious and non-religious, old guard and new guard.
In Le Grand voyage, described by the director as "a love story between a father and a son," the one who almost invariably comes out at the bottom of the learning curve is the young French-born Reda (Nicolas Cazalé), whose rabidly conservative Moroccan father (beautifully played by Mohamed Majd, best actor winner at the Mar del Plata Film Festival) forces him to act as chauffeur on an arduous 5,000km pilgrimage to Mecca.
The closest we get to a mellowing of the father’s rigid stance is his eventual acceptance of his son’s non-Muslim girlfriend, who can be seen in a photograph the young man carries around with him. (I’d be curious to see just how tolerant the father would have been had the son been carrying the photo of a non-Muslim guy throughout their pilgrimage to Mecca.)
Considering the father’s stern, self-righteous, and bossy manner, Ferroukhi should have depicted the North African man’s eventual realization that his religious piety and ascetic ways do not make him morally superior to his fun-loving, European son. Le Grand voyage, however, never reaches that destination, opting instead for a more facile — and none too convincing — resolution in which tragedy leads to a final outburst of filial love.
Reviewed at the Los Angeles Film Festival.
Notes:
After a screening of Le Grand Voyage at the 2005 Los Angeles Film Festival, director-screenwriter Ismaël Ferroukhi told the audience that it took him five years to get his project off the ground. (The film’s screenplay was written in 1998.) Le Grand Voyage was shot in 2003, and since money was tight the two leads — along with the crew — often had to travel by car, as they do in the film. According to Ferroukhi, that arrangement helped the actors’ performances and enhanced the film’s realism.
Ferroukhi added that his inspiration for Le Grand Voyage was the intriguing concept of a father and a son who live under the same roof without speaking the same language — not only metaphorically, but also literally. (In Le Grand Voyage, Reda, the son, speaks only French, while his father speaks only Moroccan Arabic.) By having father and son stuck with each other during a lengthy trip, Ferroukhi could then force the two men to confront and eventually come to terms with their differences.
Ferroukhi also explained that the "orange door" in Reda’s blue car (the door is taken from a metal heap) is devoid of any profound symbolism. It was, however, a good way to make Reda’s car noticeable whether he was driving through Istanbul, Belgrade, or Mecca.
Spoilers: According to Ferroukhi, the father’s death at the end of the film was not a convenient resolution to the cultural and generational gap between father and son, but a means to bring greater relevance to Reda’s newfound maturity. During the Q&A session, the director made an analogy to "the pains of childbirth," which are necessary for the release of a new person.
"If the film has a message" Ferroukhi declared, "then it’s a message of tolerance." He explained that he set out to make "a universal film [that would reach] beyond culture and religion." The son learns to accept his father’s religious ways; the father learns that his son must follow his own path.
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