Festering humiliation and rage of oppressed Palestinians is the underlying theme of Elia Suleiman’s Divine Intervention which opened March 14 in eight California theaters (for national playdates, see distributor Avatar Films' website).
This important film doesn’t offer a haunting love story or characters you would like to have as friends, but it will make you question the filmmaker’s intentions and the absurdities perpetrated by two enemy populations living on the same land.
Suleiman wrote, directed and stars in this black comedy which garnered two awards at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. He never utters a word throughout the biographical film chronicling the life of a filmmaker, E.S., his unrequited affair with a reporter from Ramallah (Manal Khader), the enmity between Nazareth neighbors and the death of his father.
Symbolism is rife in this enigmatic work in which Suleiman portrays the cowed Israeli Arab while his love interest is the defiant Palestinian of the West Bank. We could interpret the disturbing opening scene in which Santa Claus is stabbed by Palestinian boys as Palestinian youth attacking the myth (Santa) of peace the Oslo Accords promised but did not deliver.
The absence of dialogue amplifies the lack of communication between Palestinians and Israelis. The film is a series of absurd situations–a collaborator’s house fire-bombed at night, neighbors throwing garbage in each other’s yards, an Israeli border guard tormenting Palestinian motorists at a checkpoint–that chronicle the grim realities of life under Israeli supremacy.
Suleiman definitely does not show Israeli soldiers in a beneficent light. According to his film notes, he enjoyed auditioning Israeli actors and inquiring if they served in the Israeli Army and how they treated Palestinian civilians.
“The auditioners were put in a very ambivalent position,” Suleiman wrote. “To get the part, the actors had to show their best to the director, meaning that they could convincingly do evil to Palestinians. But then this director is himself a Palestinian; he is one of Them! Meaning–evildoing to Palestinians might not win them the part.”
His notes continue: “I heard a whole lot of stories about liberal, guilt-ridden confessions ‘I only obeyed orders’ to ‘I am defending my country, proud and would do it again’ frankness. At certain moments, I took advantage of my power position. I shifted roles from silent listener to blunt interrogator. I was pained by what they recounted, yet perversely I enjoyed the feeling of uneasiness they experienced. One actor did not serve in the army, and out of my political sentiments I took him instantly. On the set, I had to tone him down as he slightly overacted.”
In one incredible scene, we see a Western tourist ask an Israeli policeman for directions to the Christian quarter of Jerusalem. The amiable cop doesn’t know the way to the Holy Sepulcher but tells the young woman to wait a minute. He walks to the back of his vehicle, pulls out a blindfolded, handcuffed Palestinian prisoner and asks him to give the woman directions.
Much of the film deals with the frustrations of Palestinian Nazarenes–80,000 people living within two square kilometers, where unemployment and Israeli surveillance confine them in a psychological occupation.
If they can’t strike out at Israeli control, they can wage war with each other whether destroying a neighbor’s driveway or taking a knife to a soccer ball that lands on one’s roof.
Fantasy plays a major role, such as the moment E.S. tosses an apricot pit out the window of his car and it ignites an Israeli tank into a hellish inferno.
Life is tedious under occupation, but Palestinians can fantasize.
E.S. and his Ramallah sweetheart cannot be together in Jerusalem so they rendezvous in a parking lot beside a checkpoint on the Nazareth-Ramallah road.
At one point, frustrated by the endless lines of waiting Palestinian cars, Manal steps out of her car. Wearing a tight pink mini dress and stiletto heels, the beautiful woman strides toward the soldiers, they cock their rifles, she lifts her sunglasses and defiantly stares them down. As they watch this vision walk past them, the watchtower collapses.
Is this an incident or just her fantasy?
The infuriating silence of this film is finally broken in a scene in which Israeli soldiers shoot at cardboard targets of a female guerrilla. She comes to life and in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fashion, twirling above them. They spray bullets at her, which form a spinning halo around her head.
The kafiyeh-clad whirling Ninja aims crescent-shaped dart, rocks and grenades and wipes out the marksmen. Only their commander is left. Protected by a gold shield in the shape of Palestine, the woman warrior takes out the commander and a hovering helicopter gunship.
On one occasion as E.S. and Manal sit in his car, he inflates and releases a red balloon bearing a decal of Yassir Arafat’s smiling face. It floats over the checkpoint and the soldiers raise their rifles. A sergeant phones his superiors, asking: “There’s a balloon trying to get through. Can we take it down?”
It’s too late. The Arafat balloon floats toward the Dome of the Rock where it peacefully circles the beautiful golden monument.
Divine Intervention is not one of the entries in the Academy Awards’ Best Foreign-language Film category on March 28. It won Best Foreign Film at the 2002 European Film Awards, the Jury Prize and International Film Critics Prize at Cannes and the Silver Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival. However, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences discouraged the film’s producer from submitting Divine Intervention for Oscar consideration because Palestine is not a state it recognizes in its rules. However, it does accept works from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Puerto Rico.
Technically, the film should be an Israeli entry since Suleiman is from Nazareth and is an Israeli citizen. It was filmed in the West Bank and on a military base in France.
Suleiman already is writing his next film in his Paris apartment. As he continues to earn more and more accolades, the Academy may just have to create a special category for his unique style. Divine Intervention could prove to be a classic that film buffs will analyze and discuss for decades.
This is the first Palestinian film to receive a full American release.
