Film Review | Muhammad: The Messenger of God

I was 13 when I saw the 1977 film The Message. I bootlegged the double VHS of the film from my local video store in Arizona and upgraded to the double DVD a few years later when I found it in the foreign film section of a Suncoast Video (RIP). I had an attachment to the film as a teenager and saw it as validation that the story of the Prophet Muhammad was a powerful and universal underdog story. I considered the film’s director, Moustapha Akkad, a hero for what he had accomplished in making the film in Hollywood but felt it was a bit embarrassing that no one had attempted to tell this story in motion picture since 1977.

Yesterday I sat anxiously in my seat at Laemmle Music Hall in Beverly Hills to see the long awaited Muhammad: Messenger of God by Iranian director Majid Majidi. The film opens on a visually stunning shot of a bleak landscape as the rising sun peaks over the horizon and reveals a horseman charging through the desert. Cinematographer Vittorio Storaro does a phenomenal job of overcoming the greatest challenge of the film, not showing the face of Prophet Muhammad, by using brilliant steadicam shots transitioning between Muhammad’s first person viewpoint and an intimate vantage of the holy likeness without fully revealing his face.

The story focuses on the early years of Muhammad’s life, the trials of his mother Aminah (Mina Sadati), his wet-nurse Halimah (Sareh Bayat), and the great efforts of Muhammad’s grandfather Abdul-Mutalib (Alireza Shoja Nouri) and uncle Abu Talib (Mehdi Pakdel) in the protection of the child who would grow up to be the “Seal of Prophets.” Among the films more ambitious scenes is a Lord of the Rings style battle sequence between the elephant army of Abraha and a massive flock of CG birds that pelt the Abyssinian army with stones from the air.

AR Rahman’s score does an incredible job of bringing congruence to the variety of scenes and tones of the film. Specifically, Rahman’s scoring of the relationship between the young Muhammad and his mother Aminah is particularly touching in addition to a mesmerizing scene of Muhammad seeing the Kaaba at an early age. The score allows the film to elevate into the spiritual realm of Muhammad’s relationship to the divine.

Majidi’s 3 hour film is the first in a trilogy on the life of the Prophet Muhammad, but his greatest challenge will be representing the more contentious periods of the the Prophet’s life as well as communicating with non-Muslim audiences, completely unfamiliar with the history of Islam and the complexities of time in which this story took place.

International box office numbers for the film are unclear but I hope the American Muslim community supports the film and defies the immature protests of the film from a few Saudi and Indian scholars. The story deserves to be seen and experienced by the American public in these trying times for Muslims in America.

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