Young Ahmed

Young Ahmed may be described as a coming-of-age story, a searing character study, a visceral tale of redemption, a critique of extremism and the society that seems oblivious to and/or helpless against such evil.

Young Ahmed might be major filmmakers in a minor mode, but it is still a riveting, beautifully made character study that provokes compassion and controversy in equal measures.

Like its anti-hero, Young Ahmed is narrow in focus, intimate in detail and troubling in its monomania. Start to finish, it forces one despairing question on us, one it cannot answer. Can Young Ahmed be saved?

Young Ahmed isn’t a folly, exactly. It’s reasonably gripping on a scene-by-scene level, and about as starkly unsentimental as any of the Dardennes’ lean, urgent moral thrillers. But its inability to shine a light on Ahmed’s soul leaves it feeling more like an exercise than anything the brothers have made, especially by its hasty, unearned ending.

The brothers tend not to dally much with their narratives, but even adjusting for their typical brevity, Young Ahmed feels like a cursory examination of the social issues they raise. It lacks the incisiveness of their other glances directly into the heart of Belgian society.

The film never really delves beyond the level of observation and the simplistic explanations it does offer are not very satisfying; cloaking possible mental illness in religious zealotry simply clouds whatever the directors meant to convey.

All in all, Young Ahmed is not without merit. It’s an admirable attempt at portraying an immigrant experience relatively unfamiliar to the Belgian filmmaking pair, expertly directed with a number of noteworthy performances from its largely non-professional cast. Still, there’s the failure to provide nuance to a story and subject matter that practically necessitates it by nature of the intended tone.