Film review: The Voice of Hind Rajab, The Bride! (plus a ticket giveaway)

The Voice of Hind Rajab

I hate that this film exists. Sometimes a film comes that makes you question the role of art and cinema in the world. Is it just a reflection of life, easily shaped into propaganda? Art is never pure, regardless of what people say, and is always political. Wim Wenders and Nick Cave said last month that art exists on its own regardless of political agenda. They are wrong. Even apolitical art, even Wenders and Cave’s statement, has an agenda. As is often said, you may say you don’t do politics, but politics sure as hell does you.

And yet The Voice of Hind Rajab lives beyond politics and agenda. It’s in its purest form, an observation, a fly on the wall account of a particularly tragic event: the murder of a 6-year-old girl. The form adopted by Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania is simple and brave. It’s centred on the perspective of Red Crescent volunteers on the phone with Hind Rajab as she asks for help after the Israeli army attacked the car she was in and killed the other occupants. The volunteers scramble between giving the child moral support and trying to navigate the darn bureaucracy it takes to save a child in Gaza. In this case they must contact the Red Crescent headquarters who contact their Israeli counterpart who contacts the government who contacts the army who agrees on a secured route for an ambulance and then pass the message all the way back. It takes hours and is never guaranteed. The twist Ben Hania, and the thorn in our throats for the whole 89 minutes of this picture, is that the volunteers are played by actors but the voice of the little girl is Hind Rajab herself, used with the authorisation of her mother, represented by the sound waves that fill the screen like an ECG machine where voice is life.

How do we unpack something like this with a clear mind? Ben Hania uses very simple visual languages to make the story universal to everyone. There’s no space for nuance and subtext, or open interpretations of bigger thoughts and ideas. Ben Hania films this with the candour of a tale she wants everyone to understand. Cuts are quick and well thought, the camera moves freely around the space. The dialogue is simple and direct. There are no muses, no monologues. In one of the most heartbreaking scenes, one of the volunteers, Nisreen (Clara Khoury), fights tears as she tries to soothe Hind when they discover the first ambulance sent had been attacked by the army. It’s a moment of unique intensity that Ben Hania uses to remind us that there were people behind those actors, as someone films the interaction to post the video on social media and gather more support, Ben Hania frames the scene with a phone screen showing the real video with the real people. It envelopes The Voice of Hind Rajab in another veil of truth that the audience can never shake. Nothing here is fabricated, the truth is not political.

I hate that this film exists. I hate how I cried in the last 15 minutes and all I could do was hug my daughters, safely asleep in their beds. I hate how there are still people who diminish the merits of this film because they don’t want to face their guilt in complicity. I hate that a lot of you won’t go and see this film because “it looks too sad and I feel like something light”. I hate that Hind Rajab didn’t get to appreciate the pleasures of light entertainment. I hate that Hind Rajab is dead and that she was not the only innocent casualty, just the only one where we got to witness the last words. In an ideal world this film wouldn’t exist because Hind Rajab would be alive. And I hate that.

Verdict: 5 out of 5 stars
For everyone who still has a shred of blood pulsating through their heart. We all owe it to ourselves to see this.

The Bride!

In Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon, which came out earlier this year and it’s still one of the best releases of 2026 so far, the writer Lorenz Hart, played by Ethan Hawke (who should be the only actor in conversation for an Academy Award), has a funny rant about titles with exclamation marks that goes something like “any title that feels the need for an exclamation point, you want to steer clear of”. Not even two months later and here’s The Bride! Have to be honest: in part, Hart is correct. But also, I want to make an argument that The Bride! is, despite its shortcomings, a good film. Bear with me.

Because my oh me has the internet been lit by this film. The New York Post reviewer called it “the worst film I’ve ever seen my life”, which I highly doubt. Unless you’ve been sheltered by a diet of classic Japanese films and Italian neo-realism, which again I doubt it. I know the audience of the New York Post. The overreaction comes from two streams. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s second directorial effort is a kitsch punk-rock euphoric art piece that has the subtlety of a baseball bat in the teeth. And secondly because everything she does here, including the performances of her tremendous cast, is so earnestly funny, it rubs critics the wrong way. How dare these artists enjoy their craft and give the rough artifice of DIY the sickening sheen of studio glitz.

The Bride! is an attempt at repurposing the story of 1935 James Whale classic The Bride of Frankenstein. Notice I didn’t call it a remake, though both films start with Mary Shelley, the author of the original book, addressing that she had more story to tell? In Gyllenhaal’s version the tone is set Shelley (Jessie Buckley) introducing the motif of the story and the idea behind it. It’s all very aloof and confusing and it leads to us meeting Ida (Buckley again), a prostitute involved with some unsavoury crime lords in 1930s Chicago. Shelley possesses the body and spirit of Ida whose erratic behaviour leads to her death down a flight of stairs.

Cue our man Frank (Christian Bale), or Frankenstein’s Monster, who’s been scurrying the world alone since the events of the novel looking for a companion. This is how he meets Dr Euphronius (Annette Bening) who studied the realm of science that Frank’s creator did. He convinces her to dig up the body of a woman and bring it back to life so poor old Frank can finally be complete with his own wife. The body is, of course, Ida, who lost memory of herself and her name. To convince her, they call her only The Bride and persuade her she was engaged to Frank when “an accident” cut their nuptials short. The spirit of Shelley still haunting her, for some reason, refuses to disclose what her real name is.

Frank is framed like a nerdy incel whose physical atrocities are exacerbated by his lack of confidence. He likes to go to the movies, especially to see the films of Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal), a proto version of Fred Astaire without Ginger Rogers. On the other hand, The Bride is spritely and free spirited, likes to club with all the other queers and degenerates of society, while Frank quietly drinks in the corner and looks at her. It’s here that a group of mobsters assaults her and, in the process, Frank violently kills them in front of a whole street of witnesses. They must run, Frank explains, “people love monsters, there will be a mob.”

So, starts the second part of the film, a road movie in the style of Bonnie & Clyde with the two romantic leads finding love on the run, followed by a team of detectives inspired by the two leads in the classic The Thin Man. There’s Jack (Peter Sarsgaard) and Myrna Mallow (Penélope Cruz), whose name is a blatant a nod to the The Thin Man’s Myrna Loy.

The chase leads them to accidentally start an uprising of women in America, like how Todd Phillips’ did with The Joker but with feminine energy, which is vastly more positive. And it all leads to a convoluted confrontation where The Bride finally choses her name and her fate, delivering the righteous comeuppance to everyone who did her wrong.

The problem with The Bride! is how there’s a lot going on but it’s spread so thinly it’s rarely satisfying. There are so many ideas, and Gyllenhaal giddily jumps from one to another with no care for how it all gels together. It’s all the vibe of the moment. There’s a dance sequence halfway through to the tune of, of course, Puttin’ on the Ritz. It ends with the same howl the Monster makes in Mel Brook’s Young Frankenstein, just in case you missed the reference. The third wave feminism is addressed in such a heavy-handed way, it’s both not surprising and excruciating that Buckley gets to shout “ME TOO” near the end.

And yet, why not? Remember the 90s riot grrrll punk band Bikini Kill? That’s the spirit Gyllenhaal wants to bring but she gets undermined by the millions on display of the studio system. Can’t have your punk cake and eat it too. But the spirit is there. If Kathleen Hannah could sing “When she walks, the revolution’s coming // In her hips, there’s revolution // When she talks, I hear the revolution //In her kiss, I taste the revolution” why can’t Gyllenhaal also be that straight forward?

Because at the end of the day The Bride! is a good old fun time at the movies, even if its message is undermined by its lack of focus, and by an ending that is bafflingly ordinary for a film that was trying to shove the rule book down the drain. At the screening I went to, another critic brought her teenage daughter. Inadvertently, I overheard her tell her mother, “I really liked it”. Of course she did, this is unapologetically made for her. And for John Waters and every other degenerate with half a sense of fun for destruction. “Rebel girl // rebel girl // you are the queen of my world.”

Verdict: 3 out of 5 stars
For the teen girl still consumed by that ecstatic teen rage, but barely anyone else.

Ticket giveaway: Arco

LSJ and Kismet Movies have five double passes for the upcoming groundbreaking animated feature ARCO.

Academy Award-nominated ARCO follows a boy from a peaceful, distant future who accidentally travels back to the year 2075 and discovers a world in peril. Featuring voices from Will Ferrell, Natalie Portman, Mark Ruffalo, America Ferrera, Flea, and Andy Samberg hits cinemas 12 March. Watch the trailer here.

For a chance to win one of the digital passes, email your LawID to journal@lawsociety.com.au with the subject line ARCO by Tuesday 10 March.