The Book of Sun (2020)

The Book of Sun is both a high school coming-of-age comedy and a film about guerrilla filmmaking, and it nails it in both areas. The story is very entertaining from start to finish and invokes an atmosphere I have enjoyed in films like Bowfinger and The Disaster Artist without actually being anything like either films. Here is a film that was truly made for the local sensibility and very true to that, yet I believe would be a smashing success has it been given the chance to play internationally. The filmmaking is very well done, and the camera shots are smart and dynamic without being flashy. The filmmakers smartly imploys music, animations, outdoors shoots, and camera flourishes in service of telling a really good story. Set in 2010, it would have been a tall order recreating that time and place in a country with little infrastructure and expertise to pull that off, but the filmmakers managed to do that on a budget that must have been modest, and used the limitations to double down on the DIY atmosphere of a high school kids with talent and passion trying to make a movie in an atmosphere that was anything but supportive. There is a high level of situational comedy, and the cast who consists of mainly unprofessional and unseasoned young actors really delovered on the jokes. Baraa Alem, playing Hosam the aspiring filmmaker, is very good in delivering a wide range of emotions between the drama and the comdey. He is the straight man in this mayhem. The stakes are high for him, because his future is on the line, and the pressure is high on him to succeed in school to become what his family and society deem a successful man, even if it means abandoning his passion for filmmaking which he is clearly good at. The supporting team lead by Sohayb Godus, Ahmad Sadam, and especially Ismail Alhassan truly deliver on the comedy in a big. If Baraa Alem's Hosam is the brain here, Ismail Alhassan's Ma'an his best friend is the beating heart of the gang. There are many funny gags that I believe should not be spoiled, and I feel they are ripe for repeat viewing. Not only the film is great, even the film within a film is the kind of shlock horror films I would totally watch and enjoy.
This is in no way a perfect movie. If I have to say where it could have been improved, I would say the plot is predictable and the film would have been better off cut to 100 to 105 min instead of 2 hours. That said, it still is a very impressive effort considering it's the debut feature film of Godus Brothers. It is one of the rare times that I don't have to qualify my enjoyment by saying it's a good enough for a Saudi film, and instead I think it's a film that could stand on its own merits and represent us everywhere and not be graded on a curve, which might be the highest praise I can grant the film.

Sep 1, 2020