One of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, are often invoked and celebrated for being a beautiful engineering marvel. Ahmed Yassin Al-Daradji’s Iraq-Palestine-Saudi Arabia-UK-Egypt co-production, Hanging Gardens is set in as fascinating a backdrop, only here the architecture is that of the waste in the outskirts of Baghdad. Ironically nicknamed Hanging Gardens, they have also been dumping grounds of the remains of the US invasion in the Baghdad war of 2003.
The hills of garbage spread on the screen feel like works of installation art. Nothing much happens here other than some impoverished kids growing up, eking a living in the debris. One of them is a war orphan, 12-year-old Assad (Hussain Muhammad Jalil), who, along with his elder brother Taha (Wissam Diyaa), works as a garbage sifter and collector of recyclable metal and plastic for the junk dealer Haji (Jawad Al Shakarji).
He also trades in girlie magazines and pictures for some welcome cash, which makes Taha rebuke him for doing the haram (taboo) thing even as they are barely able to survive by sticking to the halal (permitted) way of life. Taha himself has a secret: spying on a woman neighbour through a hole in their brick wall. One day, Assad chances upon a sex doll left behind by the American soldiers, takes her under his wings and looks after her like a human being, bathing and dressing her up, buying clothes for her and finding her a safe space to be in. He even gives her a name—Salwah—meaning both comfort and salvation, qualities that she comes to personify in her own way.
At the core of the film is this unusual bond between a child and a mannequin. There may be nothing overly wanton about their relationship, however, having said that, even as Assad deeply cares for her, he also makes her the conduit for sexual awakening and fulfilment of the repressed adolescents and adults around him. He starts a unique profitable venture with lusty men readily queuing up to take a chance with Salwah. There’s much black humour—a lot of it to do with a star-spangled bikini—that comes to underline the dreariness. However, running parallel with the track of an inanimate figurine being put to service for men, is the shrouded, dark and intense one, about the spectre of honour killings with yet another one of the several real women found dead at the altar of patriarchy.
The film then becomes a means to probe and critique issues of politics, business, religion, fundamentalism, gender, machismo and war and posits humanism, like that of Assad, as an antidote to all that is wrong in the world. Al-Daradji dwells on the theme of friendship, rivalry and enmity, both eventually seeming like the two sides of the same coin. He also explores the idea of pollution—be it the noxious air of the dumping ground, the moral corruption and degradation of the society or the lost innocence of a child.
Al-Daradji’s debut feature is powered by a great ensemble of non-professional actors, especially Jalil as the vulnerable yet shrewd Assad. Several film festivals and awards later, it is now Iraq’s powerful entry at the upcoming Academy Awards.
What it leaves you with is a deep sense of empathy and compassion. One cannot help but feel deeply for the children, growing up amid the rubble, finding homes in busted tanks and run down vehicles, sifting for riches—be it a pair of binoculars, girlie magazines and pictures or an inert mannequin—in the scrap. Hanging Gardens is about rummaging for life in the remnants of death.
Cinema Without Borders
In this weekly column, the writer introduces you to powerful cinema from across the world
Film: Hanging Gardens
