March 8, 2022

By Chamberlain Bauman

Photo courtesy of True/False

In the 64 minutes of Karim Kassem’s documentary film “Octopus,” hardly a word is spoken. 

The documentary, which was a featured film at this year’s True/False Film Fest, explores the aftermath of the devastating port explosion that occurred in Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, in 2020. 

The film’s conception was sudden. Kassem, a New York City-based filmmaker, had traveled back to his hometown of Beirut just days before the explosion with the intention of working on a new film. According to an article from International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam, the night of the incident, he was quarantined in a hotel room facing the Port of Beirut. 

“I was blown out of the room,” Kassem said. “I literally ran for my life; I saw the shockwave coming and I ran in the other direction.”

Unlike the chaotic catastrophe of the port explosion, which physically shook the entire country of Lebanon and was heard more than 150 miles away in Cyprus, the film that Kassem made is quiet and pensive. 

The film doesn’t begin with the violent explosion, nor the subsequent political uproar. Instead, it begins with the steady ticking of a clock and a silent exploration of the inside of a Lebanese home. The camera, like a quiet visitor, delivers straight-on still shots and slow pans across empty rooms. Eventually, an elderly man and woman are discovered — him lying in bed and her smoking out the window. They, like the other subjects in the movie, do not speak. They simply gaze gravely out into space, the weight of the tragedy gathered in their eyes.

The filmmaker slowly introduces us to more people, all stationary and silent. A couple sits at a table, gazing at the tablecloth and out the window. A man sits in the street, leaning against the wheel of his truck. A group of young adults hover in a hotel room. Here, a man’s voice speaks on the phone in the background, unseen:

“Did you talk to your family?” the voice said. “We all heard it. We thought it was an earthquake.”

Kassem only shows us the faces of those who listen. Often, the only movement in these early shots is the smoke of a cigarette, curling up through the sunbeams that sneak into those silent rooms. 

In the truest sense of the word, “Octopus” is a portrait. The audience gathers the emotional weight of the tragedy through close, painterly shots of human faces. The motionless subjects gaze heavily out of frame, resembling and heightening the touching effect that a painted portrait can have. This is the emotional foundation of Kassem’s film: the unspoken intimacy of peering into a nation’s hurt, one citizen at a time. 

Kassem reveals the physical destruction slowly. 

After moving through several silent portraits, tragic clues appear around the edges. Street views are framed by broken glass, and a slow panning shot of a waterfront reveals a floating chunk of what might be debris. 

The brilliant sound design of “Octopus” serves this growing, ominous revelation. The rhythmic ticking that introduced the movie is replaced by the loud, empty blare of fog horns. The haunting synth soundtrack grows in abstract harmony, eventually giving way to the sound of sirens.

When the clues of destruction finally lead the audience to Kassem’s striking shot of the smoking Port of Beirut, the effect is heart-stopping. The long, still shot of the site places the massive smoking pit against the backdrop of the city skyline and the piercing sun. In front of it, cars stream by on a highway. 

The cars that drive by, seemingly indifferent, exemplify an aspect of the tragedy that Kassem’s filmmaking captures beautifully: the necessity of Beirut’s citizens to continue with their lives, no matter how impossible it seems.

Kassem demonstrates this impossible task with storytelling shots, such as that of a young man who receives a haircut in a shop whose street-facing wall has collapsed. Elsewhere, a man and a woman sew and measure fabric in a fabric shop while a voice on the radio makes announcements such as, “Beirut is completely destroyed,” and “The search for bodies continues.”

In one of the film’s most powerful shots, two young boys at play drag a large, flat piece of rubble behind them, a laughing little girl perched on top of it. 

Kassem’s filmmaking not only captures the inescapable weight of destruction and loss, but the inevitable resilience of human nature. The film builds a complex, comprehensive and touching portrait of a city reeling with tragedy, with bold cinematography and brilliant sound design. Just like its subjects, it finds its strength in quiet, unexpected ways.

Edited by Camila Fowler | cfowler@themaneater.com