Although the film's dialogue is in French, the DVD provides an audio track where Sharif gives English-language commentary on the movie. He notes that the last name of the teenage boy in the film is the same as that of one of the screenwriters, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt. That screenwriter is also a playwright, and the film is adapted from his semi-autobiographical stage monologue "Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran." The perspective in the stage play is that of a grown man looking back on his boyhood, and I think the film is best viewed that way as well.
We can deduce that the movie "Monsieur Ibrahim" is set in the early 1960s by the clothes and the pop music on the soundtrack, which includes old rock songs like "Wooly Bully." Youngsters do a dance that is identified by Sharif in his commentary as the Madison. Also, there's a brief sequence where we see a film being shot, and the leading lady resembles Brigitte Bardot. We're evidently intended to think of Jean-Luc Godard's "Contempt" (1963).
Most of the film takes place in a picturesque neighborhood of Paris characterized by a maze of small streets and narrow passageways. In his commentary, Sharif identifies this as a Jewish area called Le Sentier, which he says is a center for the "schmatte business." I believe he means the area has lots of places dealing in textiles.
The movie's main character is a teenage Jewish boy named Moïse Schmitt, whose first name is rendered in the English subtitles as Moses. The boy is usually referred to by the diminutive Momo. The character is played by newcomer Pierre Boulanger, and I found this young French actor's screen presence extremely engaging.
Deserted at an early age by his mother, Momo lives with his emotionally distant father. The film shows the lonely Momo availing himself of the services of local prostitutes and getting involved in a teen romance with a cute-looking neighborhood girl. But the story’s central relationship is between Momo and the seventyish Turkish grocer Ibrahim Demirdji (Sharif).
Famous for his roles in "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962) and “Doctor Zhivago” (1965), Sharif has aged gracefully, and I found him remarkably charismatic in "Monsieur Ibrahim." His low-key character quietly runs a one-man grocery store and sits reading his Koran when business is slow. Monsieur Ibrahim is clearly a deeply religious man, but his concept of religion seems to be that it is primarily something inside oneself. In practice, his focus appears to be on the needs and welfare of human beings.
An unlikely friendship develops between Momo and Monsieur Ibrahim, and late in the film they travel together to Turkey, where there's some fascinating location shooting. But I see the heart of the story as being that through knowing the elderly Muslim, the young Jew manages to find himself.
I see "Monsieur Ibrahim" as a parable about looking beyond the differences in ethnicity, religion, and culture that divide us and seeking the common humanity we all share. But rarely has a movie delivered that message in such an eloquent way, and I attribute that to writer-director François Dupeyron and his two lead actors, Pierre Boulanger and Omar Sharif.
The "Monsieur Ibrahim" DVD provides only one bonus material of any consequence, and that is the feature-length, scene-specific, English-language commentary by Omar Sharif. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing the mellifluous voice of the Egyptian-born actor and learned a lot by listening to him. I highly recommend the "Monsieur Ibrahim" DVD, and below I have listed all its special features.
DVD Details:
- Anamorphic Widescreen (1.66:1), Color
- Feature Run Time: 1 Hour 35 Minutes
- MPAA Rating: R for Some Sexual Content
- French 5.1 Dolby Digital
- English Subtitles
- Spanish Subtitles
- Portuguese Subtitles
- English-Language Audio Commentary by Omar Sharif
- Theatrical Trailer
