War erupting Beirut, Lebanon in the mid-seventies was far from an ideal environment for a young boy with cinematic aspirations to grow up, or perhaps not as native-born writer-director Ziad Doueiri demonstrates in his astonishing portrait of the hard-won lessons that war affords. Doueiri resolutely established his talents by working as camera assistant to Quintin Tarantino on Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, and From Dusk Till

Dawn, although nothing in Tarantino’s films telegraph Doueiri’s transcendent ability to phrase narrative and montage in West Beirut’s neo-realist style. The film’s form is reminiscent of Francois Truffaut (as with The 400 Blows) or Luchino Visconti (as with La Terra Trema). Doueiri’s attention to the reality of his characters’ inner-workings through revealing scenes of domestic intimacies contrasted by their bleak social atmosphere of war-zone division frames a lust for life seldom so eloquently illustrated in film.

Born in Lebanon in 1963, Doueiri centers his intimately personalized story around 15- year-old Tarek (played by Rami Doueiri — the director’s younger brother). Tarek is a bit of a provocateur growing up in a tight-knit neighborhood of civilians amidst the Christian and Muslim conflict of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975. Tarek’s adoring mother Hala (Carmen Lebbos) is an attorney barely able to work due to the unstable conditions of a city cut in half by military guards, barbed wire, and sniper attacks. Hala pleads with her philosophical and nationalist husband Riad (Joseph Bou Nassar) to take their family out of Beirut as the stirrings of war escalate around them. But Riad believes in the power of family to out-endure the violence. He quotes the conflicts of 1958, 1964 as predictable milestones of political schisms that come and go. Riad’s painfully optimistic way of rationalizing the cruel violence tightening around his family in a country he dearly loves is to say, “It’s not that bad.”

Tarek’s French-run high school has been shut down, allowing him to explore West Beirut’s lawless streets with his best friend Omar (Mohamad Chamas) and their new neighbor May (Rola Al Amin), a 16-year-old Christian girl. Omar and Tarek admire shapely women, listen to American pop music, and shoot footage of their curious circumstances with Omar’s Super 8 camera. Even simple elements of childhood friendship like sharing cigarettes, going to get film developed, or keeping company with a pretty Christian girl wearing a crucifix come under hardened scrutiny by the Muslim militia controlling their environment. Like director Claude Berri’s film Uranus, about post Nazi occupied France, Doueiri frames war-ravaged streets, alleys, and buildings for the harsh effect that they impose on the interplay of the city’s inhabitants. In one scene where people stand in line at a Tarek’s cousin’s bakery for hours to obtain bread, Doueiri perfectly captures a manifold microcosm of the community’s disquiet when a member of the Muslim militia controlling the area demands immediate service by virtue of his rifle. The situation explodes, sending gut-wrenching ripples through Tarek’s family and the people involved.

West Beirut opens with black and white Super 8 footage of Omar’s camera filming a jet being shot out of the sky over Tarek and Omar’s high school during recess. As Doueiri’s camera takes over to reveal a color view of the boys smiling and knocking about in the school yard, the film takes on a timeless photo-album quality of childhood memories of wartime as a treasured right-to-passage. The child actors that Doueiri picked for the film are persuasive as they are pleasing to watch. Mohamad Chamas, who plays Omar is a diminutive boy beyond his years. Found in an orphanage, Chamas serves as an endearing conservative voice of restraint and Muslim ethics to Tarek. Everything about Chamas demeanor speaks of an old soul with a generous heart anxious to be realized in the context of friendship. Former Police drummer Stewart Copeland (composer on Rumblefish, Very Bad Things) provides an unobtrusive musical score that embellishes West Beirut as vermouth in a perfect martini.