Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

Last night, I couldn't get myself to sleep since my energy was still on high with all of the things I have been doing during the day. I had a flight-roamed around-talked-roamed around-talked-flight. So, I bumped (not exactly bumped) into HBO with Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.

It is a very quirky feel-good romantic comedy that offers not only the cliche of romance but with a satisfying and surprising offbeat realization of life. It's a story of Britain's leading fisheries expert, Dr. Fred Jones (played by Ewan McGregor) is approached by a consultant, Harriet Chetwode-Talbot (played by Emily Blunt, a favorite) to help realize Sheikh Muhammed (played by Amr Waked) vision of bringing the sport of fly-fishing in the desert, he immediately thinks the project is both absurd and unachievable. But when the Prime Minister's overzealous press secretary, Patricia Maxwell (played by Kristin Scott Thomas) latches on to it as a "goodwill" story, the project seemed to have had a boost with the aide of the British government. As the desert is irrigated, so romance blooms, the salmon of love leaps in the river of emotion.

Alfred Jones, the fisheries expert at the center of "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen," faces challenges that are widely common for us. Jones has been going with the flow with his life and is afraid to take chances and a leap of faith. Though he's played by the effortlessly charming Ewan McGregor, Jones is as nearly as cold-blooded as the fish he studies.

His relationship with his wife, Mary Jones (played by Rachael Stirling), a sharp finance expert, never felt the conjugal bliss they have as a married couple and only saw it as a routine. It also seemed funny that when they made apathetic love, she made it look like Fred needed a certain amount of milk to nourish him or something saying, "That should do you for a while." Fred is like one of P.G. Wodehouse's characters, overmatched by life. "I don't know anyone who goes to church anymore," he says wistfully. "On Sundays we go to Target." (This really made me furious.)

Making this young fogey a viable romantic figure is the film's challenge and they overcame it along the story gracefully. Luckily, there is a clever screenwriter ("Slumdog Millionaire" Oscar winner Simon Beaufoy), a warm-spirited director ("Chocolat's" Lasse Hallström) and a favorite of mine and brilliant co-star (Emily Blunt) to lend a hand.

He is netted out of his government desk job by a bizarre research request. A sheikh wants to stock the Yemen River with North Atlantic salmon. The government, desperate for a positive human interest news story out of the Middle East, appoints Fred to the task. Fred's slow development and change of heart in the story was a struggle. As a viewer, you can actually feel the exhaustion with Fred being narrow with the idea and his absence of faith, and it's agreeable nonetheless.

The idea was "theoretically possible" just like "the theory of the manned mission on Mars was possible." At first, Fred did not have an interest or even a pinch of assuagement in working alongside the sheik's attaché, Harriet (Blunt), a lovely English rose with soulful eyes and a snippy sense of humor. For her part, she wonders whether Fred has Asperger's. But under the desert sun, a romance that looks fundamentally unfeasible becomes theoretically possible.

Kristin Scott Thomas proves herself a grand comedienne as the prime minister's press secretary who hatches the scheme, a tart, caustic conniver of imperial self-confidence. She is the sort of woman who could pick up her phone and have a hurricane canceled. She may be the scariest, funniest, most nuanced comic villainess since Meryl Streep wore Prada.

There are clever ideas in the film, like Fred's heart-to-heart talks with the koi imprisoned in his back-yard pond. And faith and the power of believing. The movie had so many contemplative and touching lines that you could actually feel the subtle weight of the movie and it actually felt good. The movie gave its purpose without actually giving the audience a hard time. While "Salmon Fishing" fritters away the comic momentum of its madcap opening chapters, it's like angling -- a pleasant diversion if you can look below the surface and muster the patience to appreciate it.

“Then in a moment, in that vast space of rocks and sky and scorching sun, I understood that he had not meant religious faith, not exactly. He was not urging me to become a Muslim or to believe in one interpretation of God rather than another. He knew me for what I was, an old, cold, cautious scientist. That was what I was then. And he was simply pointing out to me the first step to take. The word he had used was faith, but what he meant was belief. The first step was simple: it was to believe in belief itself. I had just taken that step. At long last I understood.

I had belief. I did not know, or for the moment care, what exactly it was I had to believe in. I only knew that belief in something was the first step away from believing in nothing, the first step away from a world which only recognised what it could count, measure, sell or buy. The people here still had that innocent power of belief: not the angry denial of other people’s belief of religious fanatics, but a quiet affirmation. That was what I sensed here, in this land and in this place, which made it so different from home. It was not the clothes, not the language, not the customs, not the sense of being in another century. It was none of these. It was the pervading presence of belief.

I believed in belief. I didn’t exactly feel as if I was on the road to Damascus, and I was aware I could not think straight because of the power of the sun, but now I knew what the Yemen salmon project was all about. It had already worked its transformation on me. It would do the same for others.”  -- Paul Torday, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen