In 2014, Salma Hayek produced the animated film The Prophet of Khalil Gibran, an adaptation of the best-selling book of poems The Prophet, written by Lebanese-American poet Gibran Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) in 1923. Hayek presented the UK premiere of The Prophet. film about International Women’s Day as part of the Women of the World event at London’s Southbank Center in 2015. In an interview with The GuardianShe emphasized the importance of the film for female viewers, since it is “about the courage to speak out, to believe that you are worth listening to.”
In the film, Camila (Hayek) is a widowed mother working as a housekeeper for Al-Mustafa (Liam Neeson), a foreign poet and political activist under house arrest in Lebanon under Ottoman rule. After years of house arrest, an Ottoman sergeant arrives and tells Al-Mustafa that the authorities have released him. A sergeant and a soldier named Halim accompany Al-Mustafa to the ship that will take him back to his homeland. On the way to the ship, Al-Mustafa stops to give moralistic sermons to the townspeople.
The first scene sets the stage with a posed shot of Almitra (Quvenzhane Wallis), Camila’s silent daughter, going about her daily duties: causing trouble at the local market, stealing, and jumping from one building to another with her seagull friend. When Kamila looks for her daughter at the market, she hears traders calling Almitra a thief and a troublemaker. The mother promises the store owners to compensate for all damages and losses as soon as she receives her salary.
Stealing, flying over rooftops, and causing trouble in the market speak of a child’s traumatic attempts to cope with the death of his father. Two more scenes illustrating Almitra’s traumatic struggle show her visiting her father’s grave and looking at his portrait. The opening scene is the most significant from a hierarchical point of view, since it sets the terms of the struggle between the poor widow and her silent daughter.
During the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, Hayek chose to identify herself not as a Mexican-American actress, but as a Lebanese woman (1). As a feminist, she drew inspiration for the film from Gibran’s position on equality between people of all genders. In particular, she resonated with Gibran’s sermon on marriage, which depicted man and woman as equal pillars supporting the temple (2). There is a scene in the film where a couple is dancing in a temple while Neeson’s voice is heard in the background reading the entire sermon.
In the film, Camila demonstrates her Lebanese-Mexican identity. First, Hayek names Camila after Gibran’s mother, Camila Rame, whom she considers an inspiration (3). Secondly, Camila repeats the facial features of the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. The character of the Latin-Lebanese widow echoes Camile’s time in Brazil with her first husband Abd al-Salam Rahmeh, who died shortly after the birth of their first child Boutrous, a situation that forced her to return to Lebanon (4). Unsurprisingly, the film was a personal triumph for Hayek “on the level of her equally dedicated efforts to bringFrida“on the screen” (5). The similarities between Camila and Frida reveal Hayek’s intended ambiguity and establish a strong feminist aspect to the film’s narrative.
Camila plays carefree with her daughter after suffering bullying at school and humiliation at the market.With Frida’s face and Hayek’s voice, the film resembles her Frida performance. This performance becomes even more noticeable when we consider the fact that Alfred Molina (Diego Rivera in Frida) voices the character of an Ottoman sergeant who turns out to be Camila’s employer. In one crucial scene, he speaks sharply to Camila when she offers to help Al-Mustafa pack his things, reminding her that cleaning is her job.
He insults her daughter as a silent thief and threatens to throw them in jail. These images relate to the observation that Ottoman-era Lebanon was dominated by a patriarchal social order (6). The film demonstrates the prevalence of patriarchal gender norms and internalized gender roles, as evidenced by the dominance of men in the marketplace and the relegation of women to the domestic sphere. A typical scene: the waiter Yusuf calls the cook Bashira to prepare food for Al-Mustafa. This emphasis on women doing domestic work reflects the current situation in Lebanon, where almost all migrant domestic workers are women (7).
Against this patriarchal backdrop, the cartoon glorifies Camila as a courageous, independent woman, while at the same time depicting the suffering she endured as a housekeeper. It is important to note that Camile and Frida fled an abusive marriage and eventually settled in the United States, where the former worked as a housekeeper and sold textiles to support her four children. Gibran’s father, Khalil, was an alcoholic and had little interest in fulfilling family obligations.
The film recalls Frida’s struggle as a feminist figure who fought against a gender-biased society. Just as Frida became a universal feminist figure, Camila became a role model, a strong Lebanese woman who single-handedly stood up to protect her family. Hayek explained her choice of this particular character: “Because of her courage, Kahlil Gibran was inspired to become the man he became” (8). In the film, Camila symbolizes the desire of women to work as a means of independence, having fallen on hard times after the death of their husband. The filmmakers challenge the patriarchal ideal of women’s attachment to marriage and family by portraying Camila as a strong widow determined to fight for a decent life for her silent daughter.
When the battle between the townspeople and the Ottomans to free Al-Mustafa begins in front of the prison, the women fight alongside their male counterparts. Such allusions to women’s participation in national liberation movements are historically accurate, since they reflect the fact that women in Greater Syria between 1908 and 1918 “participated in national struggles and sought to defend their rights as women in their own societies” (9) Notable Lebanese feminist activists such as Ibtihaj Kedura and Anbara Salam al-Khalidi were among the Muslim women who organized a club in Beirut in 1917 to promote nationalist and feminist ideas (10). Importantly, the battle scene challenges the patriarchal social order by moving women from the domestic sphere into the public domain of politics.
Such feminist images and the characters of Camila and Almitra have been central to Hayek’s advocacy for women’s rights in Lebanon since the film’s release. Expressing her admiration for Gibran’s mother, she criticized the Lebanese government for enacting patriarchal laws that prevent women from passing on their citizenship to their children, stating that “our blood is as good as the blood of a man, and we carry them in our wombs, therefore (blood ) belongs to us even more than to anyone else. We must be able to pass on our heritage to our children” (11). Featuring multi-faceted characters Camila and Almitra, the film touches on Lebanon’s past and present and thus portrays a patriarchal Lebanon under the Ottoman Empire.
Read more:
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Cinematic chronicles of socio-economic struggle: three classics of the 20th century
On female violence in Thelma and Louise
Links to the film The Prophet (2014): IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Wikipedia, Letterboxd
References:
1. BBC News18 May 2014, https://www.bbc.com/arabic/artandcultural/2014/05/140517_cannes_gibran_hayek.
2. Olivia Salazar-Winspear, “The Prophet: Salma Hayek Brings Lessons from Kahlil Gibran’s Life to the Big Screen,” France 24December 7, 2015
https://www.france24.com/en/20151203-encore-cinema-salma-hayek-prophet-khalil-gibran-philosophy.
3. Sylvia Westall, “Salma Hayek Pays Homage to Lebanese Roots with ‘A Prophet'” Reuters27 April 2015, https://www.reuters.com/article/lebanon-film-hayek-idINKBN0NI16Y20150427.
4. Suhail Bushrui and Joe Jenkins, Kahlil Gibran, The Man and the Poet: A New Biography (London: Oneworld, 1998), 25.
5. Peter Sobczynski, “Review of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet” Roger EbertAugust 7, 2015, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/kahlil-gibrans-the-prophet-2015.
6. Fruma Sachs and Yuval Ben-Bassat, “The Visibility of Women in Petitions from Greater Syria in the Late Ottoman Period,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47, no. 4 (2015): 766.
7. Zeina Mehzer, Gabriella Nassif and Claire Wilson, “Migrant Workers’ Rights and Women’s Rights – Migrant Women Domestic Workers in Lebanon: A Gender Perspective” (UN Women/IOM/ILO/AiW, 16 June 2021 .), 3, https://arabstates.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2021/06/women-migrant-domestic-workers-in-lebanon-a-gender-perspective..
8. Westall, “Salma Hayek Pays Homage to Lebanese Roots.”
9. Zaks and Ben-Bassat, “Women’s Visibility in Petitions,” 765.
10. Sachs and Ben-Bassat, 772.
11. Sylvia Westall, “Film star Salma Hayek explores Lebanese roots with film about the Prophet.” Reuters27 April 2015, https://www.reuters.com/article/lebanon-film-hayek-idUSL8N0XO24W20150427.
