“In Lebanon, contemporary history is not taught in schools,” reads the opening text of Lana Daher’s Do You Love Me. The documentary is a stunning visual and sonic excursion through Lebanon’s history comprised of material obtained from over 20,000 sources—a feat made all the more impressive by the fact that the country has no national archive. As images start to fly by too fast to read their accompanying (and not always subtitled) Arabic and French text, we’re cautioned that the narrative doesn’t follow a strict chronology as “disorientation is part of the journey…welcome to Lebanon.” Indeed.
The poetic observation “in this city, all memories melt into the sea” gives way to an arresting sequence of men, in shot after shot, simply facing the scenic water with their backs to an unknown lens. Guns begin to feature prominently—as do flowers and food stalls. Explosions and various depictions of wartime, from both newsreels and Lebanese action movies, are stitched together until fact and fiction become indistinguishable. (To tackle the seven decades worth of source material spanning film, photography, television, and home video, Daher collaborated with editor and co-writer Qutaiba Barhamji, and as a contribution to ongoing preservation efforts she also helpfully indexed quite a bit of the trove at https://www.doyouloveme.film/.)
“Since we have no one to refer to, we no longer know who we are,” states filmmaker and journalist Jocelyn Saab into a microphone while surveying the rubble of the house she lost to an Israeli airstrike. In a clip from Saab’s Lebanon in Turmoil, a female guide explains to a group of French-speaking tourists that the country has more than 18 religious communities, which, she theorizes, may be a source of the country’s conflicts—though she also touts its amazing cuisine.
Cut to a man on a boat waxing rhapsodic about the harmonious nature of Beirut. It’s a place where everyone gets along and no one hates each other, he assures an off-screen interviewer. But when pressed to expound further, the man laughs. “What do you want me to say?” he asks, reluctant to “air dirty laundry” in public. (In another scene from Lebanon in Turmoil, a far franker woman points out that sectarianism is actually enshrined in the government.)
A group of well-dressed elders engage in a game of cards—shot from various angles, it’s unclear whether they’re playing for the camera or themselves—while voiceover ominously tells us that “every bullet divides this city.” And as we segue between mirror images of the deadly real and cinematically staged, the distinction is rendered irrelevant, often to the brink of dark absurdity.
At one point, Do You Love Me’s soulful Arabic soundtrack even gives way to a catchy hip-hop number in which female singers deadpan rap, “In 2020…country is fucked…Corona for breakfast.” A man decries war tourism, calling it a form of fetishism. He’s certain that preserving bullet-riddled buildings does nothing to advance society. Whereas an artist complains that he had an exhibit just two months ago, and now the museum that hosted his work has been demolished. Collective memory is in a constant state of being erased as it forms.
In fact, as a pair of women discuss the state of the nation, one laments that reading a newspaper is a game of guessing what’s been erased. Elsewhere, a man who takes pride in his VHS tapes notes that he collects tales that tell a part of a truth at a given moment for certain folks. Daher’s film understands that historical truth and personal memory are inseparable from one another. (A woman even insists that she doesn’t have childhood memories so much as stories her parents told her.) “We’ve been exchanging favors for as long as I can remember…you hand me your tragedies, I give you my imagination” are the lines that play across the screen at Do You Love Me’s heartfelt close. And then suddenly we’re treated to a montage of dancing revelers set to an engaging pop score. Amid the bombs and economic shocks, the band will always play on.
Since 2001, we've brought you uncompromising, candid takes on the world of film, music, television, video games, theater, and more. Independently owned and operated publications like Slant have been hit hard in recent years, but we’re committed to keeping our content free and accessible—meaning no paywalls or fees.
If you like what we do, please consider subscribing to our Patreon or making a donation.
