When a child's every wish is granted, or subtly deflected, we expect that child to be "spoiled". Something similar can happen to an adult male whose every wish within his household is granted or subtly deflected. At least that is a conclusion you will take from watching "Sand Storm", a Netflix original from 2016.
In the first scene we meet a Bedouin patriarch, Suliman, riding in a truck driven by his daughter Layla. This might be a normal depiction of a father bringing his daughter home from a college she commutes to but for her headscarf, the bleached desert, and the background music. We are not in Kansas anymore. The winds have taken us to a Bedouin village in Israel. A place where marriageable young ladies do not go to college.
We haven't landed in Hollywood either. These days Hollywood dialog usually alternates close ups of the participants. In this movie alternating closeups in the usual way means the speakers are not feeling very connected. But sometimes this movie shows conversations a bit differently: one face is shown, as if in a close-up, but the side or back of the other person is seen too. This kind of camera work emphasizes how the two speakers are connected to each other.
Father and daughter feel connected in the opening scene. They will not always feel so. But they will remain connected and the camera will hint at their bond at times an American audience would be inclined to ignore the hint. To understand this movie you have to pay attention to how dialogues are portrayed. This is especially true because the people in this Bedouin village show considerable reserve when speaking to each other.
Before arriving in their village, Layla relinguishes the driver’s seat to her father. Villagers expect Suliman to be driving and tradition is important to him. From this fleeting scene we should be somewhat sceptical when we see Layla expect her father to make a major break with tradition.
Elite Zexer, the non-Bedouin who wrote the screenplay and directed the movie worked for years to get the Bedouin tradition portrayed correctly. Her initial interest in that culture came from her mother, a photographer who works with Bedouin villages when they apply to the Israeli state for a kind of official status. The story is of course fiction but, while researching it, Zexer met a 19 year old woman who, like Layla, falls in love with a classmate only to meet fierce resistance from her family.
This is no action movie and there is no attempt to catch our interest with a puzzle. The story line is simple, linear and easy to follow. We are encouraged to try to understand Suliman, Layla, and her mother Jalila as well as the culture they live in. Why do Bedouin women put up with the subjugation in their lives? Trying to understand the three main characters you will help you answer this question.
Israeli Bedouins celebrate weddings with separate parties for men and women. In the women’s party the guests and family member paste on mustaches so as to pretend to be men. We see this oddity because Suliman takes a second wife early in the story.
Zexer gives us reason to think Suliman loves his daughters and his first wife. As for his second wife, he lavishes much on her. Perhaps he is attracted to her but we see no hint of that. It is hard to resist thinking that part of his motivation for the second marriage (something that is permitted but not very common in his culture) is to show his neighbors how well-to-do he is. He is a traditionalist. What seems to bother him the most about his daughter’s college romance is that it embarrases him in front of the other villagers.
Layla is naively certain in her father’s good will at first but she develops into a strong woman, albeit a sadder, wiser one. Don’t let the ending distract you from what she becomes.
During Suiliman’s second honeymoon we see Jalila and her children suffer as the Suliman compound generator fails. Presumeably this is because of neglect as Suliman was planning his second wedding. This is quite a contrast with the way Suliman sets up his second wife. But everybody seems to think that is the way things should be. It doesn’t mean that Suliman has no feeling for his first wife. Their relationship is on-going and real but contentious.
One would expect it would be Layla and not Jalila who best understands how constraining life is for a woman within the Bedouin culture. That is certainly the case as the movie begins. But Jalila has lived that life and Layla hasn’t. Layla grows up. Jalila comes to understand that Layla would be better off elsewhere and not because she has fallen in love.
Light plays a curious role in this film. Bright light adds exclamation points to a linear story. When Layla leads her sisters out of the house to stay with her mother at her grandmother's house, the door opens to blinding light. When Layla makes what is likely to be the biggest decision of her life, she is sitting in a tunnel with a bright light at the end. She explains that decision in the next scene. The transition to this explanatory scene shows a bright artificial light in the same part of the screen where the tunnel's end had been.
I'm sure this switch from natural to artificial light can be interpreted as something profound. Perhaps you will enjoy explaining exactly what that something is.
“Spoiler” Alert
What does Layla choose to do? How do we see her strength at the end?
Layla was raised by a indulgent father. He is not an indulgent husband. He chose a subservient second wife and he sent his first wife back to her parents for insubordination.
On the other hand, knowing his daughter, he has chosen a subservient husband for her. She accepts his choice, without believing it was made with her welfare in mind. One reason she does so is that she can make the acceptance conditional on Suliman taking his first wife back in a way that breaks with tradition. It is unlikely that marriage will change much but there will now be a precedent of him backing down.
We see again what Layla has become as she tests her first husband on their wedding night. She finds him subservient.
We are left wondering how all this will affect Layla’s younger sisters.