Rock the Kasbah
Rita Baghdadi/Sundance Institute
MOVIE REVIEW
Sirens (2022)
“Sirens” is pitched as a documentary about a year in the life of Slave to Sirens, Lebanon’s only all-girl heavy metal band. What “Sirens” is actually about is the difficulty of being gay in a society where gayness isn’t widely accepted. The ensuring drama both experienced and created by band members who are also lesbians is completely fascinating, but it reduces three of the band’s five members to mere window dressing. Their names are barely even mentioned, and that’s just not fair. But this is what happens when drama takes over: the attention follows. We just can’t help it.
The push-me pull-you at the heart of both band and movie is between Lilas Mayassi and Shery Bechara, Slave to Sirens’s cofounders and coguitarists. While they both still live at home, Ms. Bechara is more grounded in herself, possibly because her family seems more accepting. Ms. Mayassi is not as calm or easygoing, and the dreadful argument between her and her mother, initially clearly staged for the cameras before it twists into something unforgivable, gives a pretty clear idea as to why. This means she acts out in ways very familiar to anyone who has witnessed any coming-out process, but things which are understandable in bratty teens are totally unacceptable when they risk people’s livelihoods. The ways in which Ms. Bechara and Ms. Mayassi are personally and professionally intertwined are slowly unpicked in scenes so hideously awkward the cringe is palpable. No wonder vocalist Maya Khairallah, bassist Alma Doumani and drummer Tatyana Boughaba are left frowning in the background – they didn’t sign up for this, but are far too polite to say so. But they need Ms. Mayassi and Ms. Bechara, and Ms. Mayassi and Ms. Bechara need them.
Director Rita Baghdadi must have been thrilled. When Ms. Mayassi and Ms. Bechara separately explain how anger is a consistent theme of Lebanese culture, how their society needs these expressions of fury in order to survive, and how that anger manifests both in their music and their personal lives, their candor and bravery is deeply impressive. It’s certainly more interesting than a disappointing trip to Glastonbury, where the announcer gets the name of their band wrong before a small-stage afternoon audience mostly looking for somewhere to sit down. And it’s definitely more interesting than the repeated emphasis on how the band is out of place in the local music scene.
But then their city blew up.
The horrendous port explosion in Beirut on Aug. 4, 2020, elevates the documentary from being about a little band to an entire nation. The impact of that horrific day cannot be understated, and Ms. Baghdadi rises to the occasion, bringing her movie and its story an end that it deserves. Music documentaries have a tendency to be microcosms of bigger issues, because – not to state the obvious – people use music to express their feelings. As a glimpse at how Lebanon is managing the current moment, “Sirens” has its finger on the pulse.
The young Syrian woman who briefly features is among the bravest people alive, just for quietly being herself. Those of us in countries which no longer make such a fuss about people’s sexualities could stand to be reminded of that a little more.
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