Salmon Fishing in the Yemen: A Review

From director, Lasse Hallström, and the writer of The Full Monty, Simon Beaufoy, based on the best-selling novel by Paul Torday, comes a fishy tale about much more than just salmon fishing.

Ewan McGregor stars in this British romantic comedy drama, alongside Emily Blunt and Kristen Scott Thomas, as a Scottish Ichthyologist, Dr. Alfred Jones, who is asked to work on a project which will bring salmon to the river Yemen. A visionary Sheikh (Amr Waked) finances this multimillion pound project, as he believes that fishing brings people together and could be the answer to uniting people and countries worldwide. Alfred and Harriett (Emily Blunt), the Sheikh’s representative, must embark upon this upstream struggle to prove that the theoretically possible is, in fact, realistically possible.  However, the over-enthusiastic Press Secretary (Kristen Scott Thomas), from the Prime Minister’s office, is chasing at their heels as she sees this project as a media opportunity to spread some ‘good will’ that will act as a distraction from the bombings in Afghanistan. In this funny light-hearted comedy anything seems possible as long as you have a bit of faith.

This film, however, appears to question more than just the possibility of fishing in Yemen. The Press Secretary, Patricia Maxwell and the particularly vain Prime Minister allow the film to inadvertently criticise Government and their handling of the press, as they only seem to care about image, rather than what is right for the individual people. Humour soon becomes a tool for subverting authority in this film. The media is represented as Maxwell presents herself; cold-hearted, manipulative, overzealous and intrusive. The project for Maxwell becomes all about the press coverage, rather than the intentions of the Sheikh. It is, therefore, the character of Maxwell and the outrageous ways in which she deals with situations that brings out the humour.

The character of Maxwell is contrasted by the Sheikh who believes fishermen to be the most faithful, because they do not dwell on their fellow fisherman’s backgrounds or ethnicities, but share common ground, the fish. The Sheikh, throughout the film, promotes this idea of multiculturalism through fishing. However, this idea, when put into reality, is an upstream struggle, but if one can have a bit of faith, like the fishermen who wait for hours for a bite, and if one is willing to swim against the current, like Dr. Jones, and open one’s mind then it is possible to turn the theoretically possible into the realistically possible, if the right approach is taken.

This philosophically uplifting film, where fish become metaphors for humans, who are in need, now and again, to swim upstream rather than downstream, is a delight to watch. Salmon Fishing is a film about people, rather than fish, however, it does not dwell on these heavy issues that it presents, but focuses on the humour that comes from such a preposterous project and, therefore, is a light-hearted and entertaining romantic comedy drama to watch. It is a film about making the ever impossible possible.