Divinely inspired cinema
Elia Suleiman's Divine Intervention stirs up controversy about situation in Palestine
REVIEW
DIVINE INTERVENTION
Starring Elia Suleiman and Manal Kahder
Directed by Elia Suleiman
Thursday, October 3
Plaza Theatre
When approaching a controversial topic such as the current situation in Palestine, it is important to give careful thought to the impact of different methods of representation on an audience that is likely to have a strong emotional involvement with the subject matter already.
Which is why Divine Intervention begins with a gang of Arab youths tracking down and murdering Santa Claus. A few weeks ago, the Toronto International Film Festival presented a triptych of films on the Middle East crisis – 11'09"01, Kedma and Divine Intervention. 11'09"01 was a selection of mostly conventional shorts by 11 different directors from around the world, with highly controversial contributions from Ken Loach, and Yousef Chahine. Amos Gitai's Kedma, my favourite, owed a great debt to Terence Malick's The Thin Red Line in its portrayal of a group of European Jews arriving in 1948 Palestine. But the critical consensus – in Toronto and at Cannes earlier this year where it won the Jury Prize – was that young Palestinian director Elia Suleiman's Divine Intervention was the most daring and original of the three, and possibly of any political film since Lars von Trier's Zentropa.
The first part is a simple succession of deadpan slapstick skits such as might be found in a Keaton or Chaplin film of the 1920s, except for their increasingly painful edge: set in Nazareth, all portray petty vindictiveness between Palestinians, and Islamic solidarity and compassion is only invoked with the most caustic irony.
But then the camera pulls back a little and, as the Israeli occupiers begin to show up on the periphery – Keystone Cop figures of petty and arbitrary authority – the film becomes something much more complex, an exploration of the causes and consequences of ghetto mentality. Elia Suleiman, who lived in low-rent Harlem while studying cinema in New York, claims to have been inspired by the parallels between what he saw there and in his home town of Nazareth. While Divine Intervention had been originally written as an action film, these absurd scenes, many based on actual incidents, kept on suggesting themselves to him and gradually took over the story.
While Chahine and Loach's direct and literal attempts in 11"09'01 to explain the motivation of last year's attacks only alienated those they sought to engage, Divine Intervention sneaks in the back door with an analysis that persuades emotionally before the viewer's prejudices have a chance to kick in – pointing out stupidity rather than arguing about morality. By the time this film's terrifying and hilarious closing scene flickers onto the screen, even Ariel Sharon should be tempted to reconsider his policies.
Of course, one mustn't assume that fiction can ever easily alter reality, but clearly, in all human affairs, the imaginary is the source of all change. In Toronto, where they both presented their films in person, Suleiman and Gitai were surprisingly optimistic about the prospects for peace. |
