Black Gold (2011)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Black gold |
| Original title | Black gold |
| Country of production | France , Italy , Qatar , Tunisia |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2011 |
| length | 130 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Jean-Jacques Annaud |
| script | Jean-Jacques Annaud |
| production | Tarak Ben Ammar |
| music | James Horner |
| camera | Jean-Marie Dreujou |
| cut | Hervé Schneid |
| occupation | |
| |
Black Gold is a monumental film by the French director Jean-Jacques Annaud , who also wrote the script. At the center of the fictional plot are two warring kingdoms on the Arabian Peninsula , which fight for an oil-rich region at the beginning of the 20th century. The film is based on the novel The Black Thirst by the Swiss writer Hans Ruesch . Most of the recordings were made in Qatar and Tunisia .
action
Arabia in the 1930s: the Arabian Peninsula is still characterized by hostile Bedouin tribes. In a war over the area of the yellow belt , Amar, King of Salmaah, is defeated by his rival King Nesib of Hobeika and has to leave his two sons Auda and Saleh hostage to secure the peace treaty. The treaty stipulates that the yellow belt will be declared a neutral area, which neither of the two rulers may claim. The years go by and the two brothers grow up to be young men. The hostile environment, illnesses and non-existent medical treatment eat away at the people of Arabia. Representatives of Texan Oil discovered a large oil deposit in the yellow belt and developed it with Nesib's permission. With the associated income, Nesib begins to modernize his kingdom. Since the peace treaty does not allow him to claim the area in which the oil was found, Nesib sends a delegation to Salmaah to negotiate with Amar. However, the delegation returns a short time later without having achieved its destination. Thereupon voices are loud calling for another war against Amar. This eventually causes Saleh to kill his guards and flee. However, he was captured on the run and shot a little later.
But instead of taking revenge on Auda, Nesib forces him to marry Princess Leyla, Nesib's daughter, whereby Auda becomes a family member and the peace treaty becomes invalid. In a final attempt to find a solution to the conflict through negotiations, Nesib sends Auda himself to his father.
Once in Salmaah, however, it quickly becomes clear that Amar will not allow oil production in the yellow belt . For this reason Amar plans to take to the field against Nesib. He intends to march an unarmed group of released convicts under the command of Audas through the desert, which is also called the house of Allah , in order to divert Nesib's troops so that Amar can take Hobeika with the actual force.
After initial doubts, Auda takes command of the unit and, accompanied by his half-brother Ali, sets off towards Hobeika. When his unit encounters armored vehicles of the enemy, Auda surprisingly manages to defeat them with a clever tactic. As a result, Auda's army repeatedly manages to defeat the enemy in battle. In an attack on the Bani Sirri camp, he finally frees numerous slaves and leaves the tribal chief tied up. When Auda is finally shot and then falls into a death-like coma from which he only wakes up during a funeral prayer, most of the tribe members think that he has risen from the dead and is therefore the Mahdi . This event and the liberation of slaves eventually made him so popular that he managed to unite all the southern tribes and lead them into battle. However, his half-brother Ali fell victim to an air raid at the same time.
Finally, Auda and his army reach Hobeika, which is already besieged by his father. This has already achieved the capitulation of Nesib and forced a return to the old peace treaty, which is why he immediately stops oil production. Despite the negotiated peace, the sheikh of the Bani Sirri shoots Auda in revenge for his humiliation, but fatally hits his father Amar. Since the men of Nesib fear becoming victims of the revenge of Auda and his army, they start the battle again, which they lose, however, which ultimately leads to Nesib abdicating in favor of his daughter Leyla, which enables Auda to unite both kingdoms and with Help the oil revenues to modernize the state, which his conservative father would never have allowed.
background
Jean-Jacques Annaud's film uses a fictional story to explain to the viewer the time of the oil discovery in Arabia and the associated social conflicts of the Arabs, some of which have not yet been overcome. King Nesib represents the unscrupulous but enlightened, cosmopolitan ruler who realizes that only oil is able to lift the standstill and free the Arabs from a daily struggle for survival. King Amar acts as a counterpart to the noble but backward conservative ruler who is advised primarily by the reactionary religious scholars. In a key scene, Auda discusses the benefits of oil with the religious scholars, who try to justify religiously that the benefits of the oil are un-Islamic and heretical, to which Auda replies, why God puts the oil in the soil of the Arabs when he doesn't want to that they use it. If one looks for historical parallels, one can equate the religious scholars of Salmaah with the ultra-orthodox scholar establishment of the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia , who also - as in the film - were against oil production, the presence of non-Muslims and technical innovations and their resistance from time of the telegraph over the radio, television to the times of the Internet and the present. The kingdoms of Salmaah and Hobeika represent in this respect an old, past and tradition clinging and a progressive, modern Arabia, while Auda later takes a middle path and leads his people into a new era of change and prosperity.
criticism
“Adventure epic about the beginning of global oil hunger and its destructive consequences. The entertaining film shows solidarity with the threatened Bedouin culture, but at the same time makes extensive use of orientalist clichés and looks more like a fairy tale from 1001 nights than an attempt to approach historical facts. "
“But Annaud fails on almost every level. The story remains strangely banal, the characters horribly thin, especially since the main actors don't really seem Arabic. All that remains is a few edifying desert images. "
"Opulently illustrated homage to" Lawrence of Arabia "& Co., which initially takes a little longer, but rewards perseverance in the second half with an impressively filmed desert tour de force."
The German Film and Media Assessment (FBW) in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating of particularly valuable.
Web links
- Black Gold in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Black Gold in the German dubbing index
Individual evidence
- ^ Certificate of Release for Black Gold . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , January 2012 (PDF; test number: 130 629 K).
- ↑ filmstarts.de: Black Gold , accessed on February 23, 2013
- ↑ Black Gold. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed December 6, 2018 .
- ↑ Black Gold. In: prisma.de . Retrieved December 6, 2018 .
- ^ Black Gold Filmkritik , Christoph Petersen, filmstarts.de
- ↑ Black Gold. In: FBW. Retrieved December 6, 2018 .