THE economic crisis may be receding in our collective rear-view mirror (a metaphor that's oddly appropriate here), but as this charming and thought-provoking Spanish film proves, it still has some mileage in it as a narrative source.
Hassan's Way is basically David Lynch's The Straight Story remade with a Moroccan farm worker on a tractor instead of an OAP on a glorified lawnmower, and with themes ranging far beyond the domestic to touch instead on what happens when economies collapse. Hassan, 13 years separated from family and homeland, has bought a tractor from his old boss and is driving it home to Morocco from Cozar in La Mancha - very slowly and with regular stops for police checks/spare parts/prayers. His thinking is simple: why work hard for nothing in troubled Spain when he can do it at home? Then again, what is home? It's not where you're born, it's where you make enough to eat, says his friend Rashid when Hassan meets him in the port city of Algeciras. But Hassan doesn't agree. Powerful, but quietly so, this is an accomplished work from first-time writer-directors Fran Araujo and Ernesto de Nova.
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