• Le Jeune Ahmed (Young Ahmed)

6/25/22 (Sat)

The Dardenne brothers’ 2019 film starts in the middle: when we meet Ahmed, an introverted Belgian teenager, he has already come under the spell of a charismatic imam and is becoming increasingly radicalized. He berates his mother for drinking wine and his sister for dressing like a normal Belgian girl, and refuses to shake his teacher’s hand because she teaches Arabic through popular song rather than the Koran and, worse, is dating a Jew. He eventually decides to cure the teacher by killing her. Bearing a knife, he goes to her residence with every intention of stabbing her to death but fouls up, resulting in his detention in a halfway house. He is treated with deference and kindness by all, including the teacher herself, in hopes of reforming him, even to the extent of allowing him to pray and follow Islamic teachings. He seems to be doing fine, but eventually breaks out. He runs through wooded areas (in a scene reminiscent of The 400 Blows) and manages to reach the teacher’s home. He detaches a metal spike from the home and climbs it in an attempt to get in, only to slip and fall from the second floor to the ground, seriously injuring himself. When the shocked and unsuspecting teacher finds him and runs for help, he asks her forgiveness, though whether that is from guilt or for the action he plans to finish up eventually is left unclear.

One notable point, though not highlighted in the film, is the absence of a father. Ahmed is being raised in what seems a typical middle-class Belgian household by a single mother, who appears to be Caucasian. Given that he doesn’t speak Arabic, I assume that he was born and bred in Belgium. We are never shown what might have led this soft-spoken kid to turn to Islam and against the society that nurtured him, especially as his sister seems typically European in outlook. His older brother similarly follows the imam but still laughs and jokes like a normal teenager with his friends, much to Ahmed’s displeasure. Perhaps it is Ahmed’s less outgoing nature that draws him to seek comfort in the strictures of Islam. Whereas just a few months earlier, according to his mom, he was playing video games, he now looks at jihad videos and emulates a cousin who has martyred himself in a battle against evil. It’s easy to imagine him drifting to the imam as a substitute father or male model figure, though the imam is hardly a paragon of virtue: when the troubled kid comes to him after the attempted killing, he turns him over to the police rather than help him to avoid being tainted by association, which could lead to his own expulsion from the country.

It’s often argued that European society has failed such children by not assimilating them, but the situation as presented here presents a different and much deeper-rooted possibility altogether. Indeed, despite society’s sincere efforts to rehabilitate him, the boy’s murderous conviction is unchanged, and his final apology felt like an Islamic version of A Clockwork Orange. There is some acknowledgement of differences within the Islamic community in one scene where parents argue over whether their European-born kids should learn Arabic as actually spoken or from the Koran, but the film is mainly content to show the situation as is rather than pursue its social implications. Obviously this is fiction, but the filmmakers, knowingly or not, have offered fascinating food for thought.

Idir Ben Addi barely registers as Ahmed, though as a character that makes him even scarier – how many Ahmeds are out there? Myriem Akheddiou is especially fine as the caring teacher whose efforts to befriend the boy nearly lead to her elimination. The film offers a straightforward look at an important topic.