Oualid Mouaness’ 1982 provides a snapshot of Lebanon through a child’s eyes processing a landscape beset by war and the threat of it
Oualid Mouaness’ 1982 opens with slow, peaceful aerial shots of the Lebanese countryside, from above. But anyone going in with any knowledge of what the title means understands peace is not going to be an option for long in Lebanon circa 1982, and in point of fact, the perspective we’re looking at could just as easily be what fighter pilots see before dropping bombs. But that comes later. By the time that perspective gets repeated under entirely changed circumstances, much will have transpired. From our vantage point as viewers, forty years in the future, there’s an inevitability to the proceedings. But to the 11-year-old kids on whom the story focuses, it’s just another day at school. At first.
Wissam (Mohamad Dalli ) has written a note to Joanna (Gia Madi) to tell her he likes her, but he can’t quite bring himself to come clean that it was him. And when his friend Majid tries to investigate, he makes things even more awkward, and the two boys angrily blow off their friendship for a moment. Meanwhile, a teacher named Yasmine (Nadine Labaki ) tries to urge her brother Georges not to go off and fight with a Christian militia in the skirmishes with Israel and the PLO that are getting steadily worse. Yasmine’s boyfriend, a fellow teacher named Joseph, spends the day doing what we might now consider the 20th century version of doomscrolling, as he obsessively listens to the radios as often as he can to hear all his fears of war steadily being realized.
The average non-Lebanese contemporary viewer, not necessarily knowing the politics and history, may find themselves as confused as the kids are. At one point, upon being told the distant dueling aircraft are from Israel and Syria, one of the children asks, “Who’s on our side?” “Neither of them,” is the response. What do these youngsters know about the Israel-Palestine conflict that’s about to spill over? Their city is divided into Christian and Muslim halves, and the proxy war involves Israel attacking refugees. But to Wissam, checkpoints and borders are merely classist obstacles to visiting the girl he likes, only traversed by those with great privilege.
Though it doesn’t actually take place in real time, the movie initially feels like it does, between classes and recesses and teacher meetings. The principal is a Caucasian English man; the teachers, mostly Lebanese, do all their lessons in English but don’t normally speak it casually. As distance booms get closer, Wissam draws a giant robot named Tigron in his notebook. In some scenes, the sky dissolves into a rotoscoped version of Wissam’s bright blue artwork; later, when the jets scratch up the pretty blue yonder with their trails like so many malicious key scrapes on a car’s paint job, the aesthetic violation symbolizes the humanitarian cost.
Mouaness uses minimal score on the soundtrack until the first armored cars drive right by the schoolyard. Their engine sounds are doubly jarring when accompanied by the first real non-diagetic music in the movie. And through it all, our perspective seldom wavers from that of the school. Occasional trips to the roof by the adults offer a bit more of a big picture; for the kids, it’s just a big disruption from their own small-scale goals.
The title 1982 has specific meaning in Lebanese history, but it also serves as a reminder that this is a period piece. Because aside from one kid obsessed with his Walkman and cassette collection, nothing about the movie feels dated. Calculator watches may be confiscated instead of cell phones, but otherwise this could be a tale of Ukraine today, or an American act of terrorism tomorrow. We may think our political differences are bad today, but they’re surely no worse than in mixed families where various members take different sides in a war.
Nobody dies onscreen in 1982 – the sense of disconnected doom approaching from far away is the point, as is the way kids cope. Wissam imagines a future that’s better and more protected; by now, he’d be a middle-aged adult and it sure doesn’t feel like the violence over his lifetime has solved much of anything. Perhaps by reminding us of the importance of small moments worth protecting, a movie like 1982 can rekindle the connection to that inner child of decades past.
