Kaleidoscope

A young boy loves his fantasy world, which he accesses by looking at things through his homemade kaleidoscope; helping him to see a happier version of his parents, and perhaps also of the world he lives in – since Beirut is a place where reality is pretty much unavoidable. When such a reality hits the boy's father, it causes them both to confront a reality without any sort of filter.

There are good ideas in this film, and a potentially good clash between childhood, the reality of adulthood, and the moment where one is forced to have your first appreciation of those realities as a child. We get to see this through the converging and then shared experience of the father and son, in which both of them have to accept reality in one way or another. As an idea it is a good one, but as a delivery it is not so strong. The narrative is a little too functional, and we follow neither character particularly well – we see enough in the first half to set them up for who they are, but the second half is quite obvious in its journey. It does produce some nice shots, and a nice performance from the young lead, but mostly it is not particularly engaging, and doesn't really draw the viewer into the story and characters as it needed to.