Salma owns a lemon grove on the west bank in palestine, but the defense minister of Israel Navon builds a house adjoining the grove. His security forces decided the grove is a threat and must be torn up. there is precedent - Olive groves have been torn up, used presumably by terrorists to infiltrate into Israel or launch rocket attacks. Salma is a strong woman and hires a poor young lawyer, Ziad. Minister Navon's wife, Mira, has sympathy for Salma, but is torn between her loyalty toward her husband and her sympathy for Salma. The reviews of this movie I think miss the complexity of the film. Mira admires her husband, who has protected her family over the years, and who has protected Israel. But she also recognizes that the protection has a price: their new home is like a prison. the end of the movie is anything but simplistic: families are destroyed, Jews and Arabs live in a man made prison of their own creation, no one is happy. Sound familiar ? And of course there are plenty of opportunists who benefit from this stand off. Sound familiar? The film itself had some good camera angles, good scenes, captured the land of the west bank, captured the faces of the people (I suspect most of the Arab actors were actually jewish...I will check this out - update; I checked it out, a few were israelis playing arabs, but Salma is a palestinian arab who has appeared in many films including Munich, some others are arab-christians) But the copy of the film I saw had some bad edits, I am sure some scenes were cut out by a sloppy copy of the film. i dont know how the film was delivered - I didnt here the projector going, so this must have been a disc or some kind. I think the film transfer process to the disc cut some of the film. Who knows. anyway, I enjoyed it. it is much better than the reviews. Would provide lots of discussion for a class on middle east politics.
No comments:
Post a Comment