Man Who Sold the World
Imad & Swel Noury | Morocco | 2009
108 min

Man Who Sold the World is based on “A Faint Heart” a short story by the granddaddy of existentialism Fyodor Dostoevsky; it is the second feature film from Moroccan brother-duo Imad and Swel Noury, who probably grew up on Godard instead of Big Bird from Sesame Street, played with Taschen art books instead of crayons and favored punk rock over Twinkle Twinkle Little Stars. (Bowie’s song Man Who Sold the World also becomes the film’s title.) In fact, it is such a labor of love that the filmmakers’ own mother Pilar Cazorla had to assume the sole duty of producer, allowing the young directors carte blanche in self-indulgence. Then why blame the Brothers Noury when they spare no expense in creating a very personal vision of style and excess?

I had the opportunity to speak with one of them — writer and co-director Swel Noury — at the 2009 Dubai International Film Festival, and he confessed a strong predilection for cinema, pop culture, art and geeky camera technology, which is apparent from the expressionistic visuals and experimental narrative. The plot concerns X (played with beguiling charm and repulsion by Said Bey), a rather unattractive clerk in a futuristic, unrecognizable city (actually Casablanca) who is madly in love with beautiful French cabaret performer Lili; luckily, she feels the same way, and the happy couple have even been “approved” by the Ministry to be married. Only problem is that X, like any logical guy who has read enough Kafka and Orwell, is a little fucked in the head and is unable to accept such happiness. Man Who Sold the World documents X’s tragic descent into madness via 108 minutes of French New Wave-style montages, 15 chapter headings, one prologue, one epilogue and epilepsy-inducing handheld camerawork.

But if you can take it all (and most viewers can’t, except may be hardened cinephiles and art connoisseurs) there is much to be relished in Man Who Sold the World — the Brothers Noury have a taste for the aesthetic and conceptual: this much is clear from the Antonioni-esque compositions lensed by cinematographer Paulo Ares, the influence of Vermeer in the set decoration and, most importantly, Orson Welles’ The Trial (itself a Kafka adaptation) which is the pivotal inspiration behind this film’s theme of helplessness of the individual in a totalitarian society where love and free-thinking are dangerous dirty words. That and punk rock…

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