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The Cruel Sea Movie Review

The Cruel Sea is a 1972 Kuwaiti drama film directed by Khaled Al Siddiq. It was the first Kuwaiti movie ever produced and it deserves to be seen by more people for all its strengths.

This is a drama about Kuwait before the discovery of oil when fishing was the predominant occupation. This was an entirely different era for this country as they did not know about oil, so fishing was pretty much their only source of income. Even worse, collecting oyster pearls where one in a hundred yielded results was an exhausting job that only some could brave through.

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The movie follows one of these men. A young guy who pines for a girl whose father wants to marry her to another man, he sets off to find some of these pearls to help his cause. Needless to say, the movie is at its best when it is just concerned with being a historical artifact about the state of Kuwait in pre-oil times, but the love story framing did not quite cut it for me, especially as the female love interest is underdeveloped and the emotional engagement in this romance is very low.

But seeing the country in such a vastly different period for them was fascinating. Even more intriguing was the Greek tragedy theme of the titular sea being so unforgiving toward all men. Life at sea is incredibly difficult and this is one of the movies that emphasize that to the fullest extent. The many prayers to the sea and God himself made the film a very moving look into any hard profession set at sea, especially during previous eras.

The Cruel Sea is certainly documentarian in that regard as it depicts this life so effortlessly, thus the drama and romance at the core felt inferior to those aspects. The characterization is also off, though the acting is fine. As a result, it would have been much better off as a documentary feature in my opinion.

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Technically speaking, it is entirely polarizing to me. On the one hand, the movie is dated in its use of camera, especially the antiquated close-ups. And it simply looks bad due to its very poor quality unfortunately. It needs to be restored as soon as possible. On the other hand, some of the imagery is genuinely striking, the direction is solid, the underwater sequences are impressive for its small budget and the score is pleasantly archaic and area-specific.