A middle-aged man gets up from his table in the garden of a restaurant in the middle of the Lebanese mountains to look for one of the workers in the place, but he cannot find him.

He wanders around the kitchen and finds food being cooked on the fire, and despairs of finding anyone, so he heads towards his car to ask them to leave with a woman who was with him.

They suddenly hear the sound of warplanes flying at a low altitude, and after he checks something in the car, he turns around and does not find the woman who was looking at the screen of her mobile phone, and her feet led her to the forests surrounding the place without guidance in the movie “The River” by the Lebanese director Ghassan Salhab, production 2021. Which premiered on Netflix this month.

The film is the conclusion of a trilogy of films by the director, in which he probes the depths of the Lebanese individual’s self, which began with the movie “The Mountain” in 2010, which embodies the story of a middle-aged man who intends to travel through Beirut airport, but retreats and rents a car to drive under cover of darkness on desolate highways before encountering terrifying atmosphere.

The story of the film revolves around a man chasing this woman in the woods in search of her, to discover that the matter is much more complicated than just this, and that she went through psychological trauma while searching for herself while this man searches for her.

Sometimes he finds her, and she moves quietly away from him, disappearing in the middle of the trees. When he completes the walk, she searches for him, so that they meet again.

At each meeting, the secrets of their relationship are revealed, which the film does not fully disclose, delving deeper into the symbolism of the story.

Throughout the film, which lasts more than an hour and a half, there are only these two actors: the famous Palestinian actor Ali Suleiman and the Lebanese actress Youmna Marawan.

As for the dialogue between them, it takes place in the language of eyes and physical performance more than words.

The geographical topography of the Lebanon Mountains also plays a pivotal role in the story, as clouds hang over this atmosphere in an autumnal weather that strips the leaves of trees from their branches in a simulation of the psychological terrain of the Lebanese tired of war, whose ghost appears from time to time with the sounds of warplanes flying in the background of the scenes or the remains of Israeli weapons.

In the film, the man searches for love, while the woman searches for herself and her psychological well-being.

In their pursuit of their destination, they try to embellish the ugly reality by using the phone screen.

The screen here is used to document some moments and retrieve some memories, and it is always present in the scenes as if it were a haven from the painful reality.

The matter is a clear projection on the role of smart phones in contemporary life as an essential element, not a complementary one.

This is in addition to clear symbols known in psychiatry, such as the dog that appeared several times, in reference to what is known as the "black dog", which is the description attributed to the psyche of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill during a difficult period in his life.

The expression then became fashionable to describe depression as a black dog standing behind a person and threatening him.

The film is the conclusion of a trilogy of films by the director, in which he probes the depths of the Lebanese individual’s self, which began with the movie “The Mountain” in 2010, which embodies the story of a middle-aged man who intends to travel through Beirut airport, but he retreats and rents a car that he drives under cover of darkness on desolate highways before he encounters Terrifying atmosphere.

The second film is “The Valley” in 2014, whose story revolves around a man who suffers an accident on a remote road in Lebanon and loses his memory.

Draw scenes using sound

The film relied on employing an unknown source sound track in most scenes of the film, as if it appears to us as the fourth actor after the man, the woman and the mountainous nature.

And it all started with Ragheb Alama's romantic song "Ya I Wish I Hide It" at the beginning of the movie, which quickly got confused before it was interrupted to change the atmosphere of the man's session with the lady in the restaurant and be the turning point in the first scene.

As if the voice here expresses what the Lebanese want and do not want.

Sometimes the sounds of singing come loaded with feelings of joy, then the sounds of planes come, and then sounds in nature that raise anticipation and caution.

The soundtrack is absent in the film due to the natural sound emanating from the surrounding environment, carrying various dramatic messages that contribute to enhancing the psychological atmosphere experienced by men and women separately or affecting them together when they meet in this turbulent relationship.

The strangest voice was the voice of the lady, who comes chanting poems attributed to Rabia al-Adawiya:

I knew passion since I knew your passion

And I closed my heart from those who are against you

And I am talking to you, who do you see?

Hidden hearts and we do not see you

They are poems that put the viewer at a loss as to whether the lady is looking for her personal self or her soul, because the verses sung by Umm Kulthum, composed by Riyad Al-Sunbati, mainly refer to divine love.

Which began clearly with the ending theme in the film, which clearly indicated the song, its writer and composer.

And here enters a dimension that was not clearly shown throughout the film, which is the spiritual dimension.

The film lacks some dramatic justifications for the movement of the hero and heroine, as there is no answer to the question of how to find it?

How do you find it each time?

As if the subject happened by chance, it is difficult to logically repeat it every time, unless the circumference in which they move is rather small, which is not indicated in the film, even if symbolically.

On the contrary, it seemed as if they were walking in a straight rather than a circular path, for they discovered new things each time they moved like a dark cave, waterfall, and river.

The film does not belong to traditional commercial films, but rather - if it is possible to describe it - it belongs to aesthetic films that can find a popular market in festivals or among audiences who love this type of slow-paced, deep-sounding film.

And it does not satisfy the passion of the viewer looking for the story, so there is no clear story here, but rather a philosophical and psychological visual rhythm that takes the self, identity, and the Lebanese terrain as a starting point to enter the depths of contemporary man and his troubled psychological relationships.