Clash movie review & film summary (2017)
The first people thrown into the van are two journalists, an Egyptian-American named Adam (Hany Adel) and Zein (Mohamed El Sebaey), who work for the Associated Press. The police do not trust them, and think they are spies for the Muslim Brotherhood. When a gang of people arrives to throw rocks at the police van, not even knowing who is inside, more people are arrested, like a mother (Nelly Karim's Nagwa), her husband and their young son. The three are outraged about the chaos overall, with no allegiance to either large side. Later on, actual members of the Muslim Brotherhood are brought into the van, and tensions are raised about the people inside. Outrage swells on the inside, and we are trapped. The cinematography sometimes has a virtual reality effect, along with the ever-impassive nature of how Diab coordinate these close quarters and all of these characters.
All of these different people are in a police van, their allegiances unknown to the outside world. The van proves to be a death trap of sorts for them, especially when they are being moved by the police, who are then the targets of protesters. When protesters throw rocks towards the police, it's not considered that someone inside the van could be hurt badly by the rocks, as does happen. The rocks instead come like a hail storm, weathered by the animosity they are experiencing as a microcosm inside the van. "Clash" can be ruthless to its characters and to its audience, the product of filmmaking that surges equally with adrenaline and moral outrage.
Curiously and stubbornly, Diab's story doesn’t take sides with its conflict. “Clash” is ultimately a tragedy, a movie that actualizes how people of differing views can indeed get along when put into the same sense of danger, but those same groups of people can hate each other if they don’t see the other side.
It's the character drama tends to make Diab’s sound vision seem otherwise incomplete, with some anxiety lessened in the process. You care more about characters in movies when they seem like real people and not just reflections, whereas this one goes for the latter. The funny guy in this chamber piece, for example, wears a strainer on his head and is fat and jolly. Or, as the movie takes time to let certain characters air out their own drama, one young boy even says to a young girl, “When I’m in school, we play army and MB. We slaughter the MB.” To which she replies, “When I play, we slaughter the army.” The story isn’t always so direct, but you notice when it seems too pat as creative non-fiction. It’s the wrong solution to Diab’s ambitious idea of including so many characters, and making them emotionally recognizable.
