NZIFF Review: Phantom Beirut

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Written by Trevor Pronoso |  Letterboxd: @CleverGurl | Instagram: @trev.pro | Contributing Writer

Phantom Beirut (1998)

dir. Ghassan Salhab

France / Lebanon, 117 mins

Possibly my favourite film I've seen in the festival thus far. I can't help but identify with every single sentiment Beirut Phantom represents: the exasperated love and conjugal dissatisfaction with the place you were born in and grew up.

My parents asked me on my birthday a few weeks ago if I ever wanted to go back to the Philippines, now that it's been almost a decade since I first arrived in Aotearoa. I replied, "No. There's nothing for me to go back to." My parents didn't seem offended because it was the same feeling that had compelled them to leave in the first place; there was nothing worth going back to and staying permanently. I've pretty much cut off most of my childhood friends, I started calling myself 'Trevor' as opposed to 'TJ' back in Manila, I don't particularly have the nicest relationship with my extended family and relatives, and my parents sold the only house we've ever lived in to fund our migration to Aotearoa (a satellite image of my old home in Google Maps is all I can return to).

While the Philippines isn't Lebanon, my parents would have been children during the Lebanese Civil War, which was around the same time Ferdinand Marcos implemented martial law in 1972. They speak of the Philippines almost in the same way the characters in Beirut Phantom speak about Lebanon in the late 90s; they've suffered for their country and received nothing but more suffering in return. If it wasn't the resentment my parents would express towards me or any fellow kababayan out and about in Auckland, it was a shrug of indifference masking a desire to voice opposition. Better to forgive and forget than remember and resist. Migrating and becoming an amnesiac is less mentally taxing than staying put and living with the monuments of your trauma.

I can't help but feel like I'm also living in exile like our protagonist, Khalil, who drives along the streets of Beirut in a rental car. I still vividly remember the long, winding expressways of Marcos Highway and Katipunan Avenue en route to my school in Quezon City. Unfortunately, a quick glance at these roads on Google Street View reveals that most of the buildings I remember passing by have since been demolished. Everything still looks like it's under construction, with all the concrete rubble and traffic cones that constantly bottleneck traffic to such an egregious degree that I remember multiple instances of coming home from school at 7 pm because the commute took three hours. If it's bad enough to return home to nothing, it's further compounded by gridlock traffic that defines living in a car-centric city like Manila.

Switch on the 6 pm news in the Philippines; you're greeted with another murder in Tondo, another 'riding-in-tandem' robbery caught on CCTV, another case of political corruption, and another movie celebrity running for political office. What differentiates the blaring sounds of a TV playing 24/7 news from distant gunfire heard kilometres away? The terror out there is now contained, domesticated in a rectangular screen inside your living room. Rather than hide from gunshots, we replay and repost them online, amplifying the noise a thousandfold. You can't really do anything but ignore the noise, to treat them as distant, as a given. The sound of gunfire never ceases in Beirut Phantom, except until a car bomb explodes in your face, as the barking of guerrilla fighters momentarily halts the ringing in your ears. Is that sound coming from the TV or the army in front of your door? Why differentiate at all?

The thought of going back is still far away from me, although I know deep down in my heart it's an inevitability I will have to reckon with when the time comes. I convinced myself for the longest time that living in the Philippines was miserable, rather than trying to understand why migrating was even an option at all. Why does the West strong-arm you into its influence, no matter the consequences (Marcos fled to Hawai'i along with the billions-worth of wealth stolen from the Philippine government)? Beirut Phantom ends rather abruptly, with our protagonist Khalil—who inexplicably disappears in the final third of the film and is revealed to have been kidnapped—is now being released only because the kidnappers mistook him for someone else. It's a closure that I can only dream of manifesting in my own life: If I were to come back home permanently, I can now finally shed the imprisoning identity that has shackled me into a life of constantly searching, of running away, of convincing myself that I come from a damaged culture.