'Divine Intervention': A depiction of Palestinian-Israeli conflict
Talented filmmaker, Elia Suleiman has crafted an avant-garde movie based on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, without taking recourse to a traditional storyline. Suleiman has put together a few absurd and apparently unconnected shots to transport the viewer to an eerie world of glum-faced men doing things that defy any reasonable explanation. Thus, as we watch in the opening scene, an elderly man rides his car, responding to lifeless waving of hands of pedestrians and also car-riders going in the opposite direction with unutterable curses under his breath. Or two elderly men sitting side by side on the roof of a one-storey building doing nothing whatsoever, not even talking or gesturing between themselves.
All these and many other irrational actions take place in an apparently ghost-town of narrow streets with thick, high walls all along, signifying not only an impenetrably divided city, but also a divided nation, or two nations, destined to live side by side, but irreconcilably at odds. But this divided city, or the country, is not all that lifeless. There's the occasional bomb-blast or spraying of bullets from speeding cars.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. Against this backdrop is a love affair of the protagonist, ES (played by Elia Suleiman) and a beautiful Palestinian woman played by Manal Khaderi. ES is a resident of Nazareth and Khaderi is from Ramallah. The Israeli soldiers have put up a roadblock and ES cannot cross and go over to Ramallah and meet his fiancé. But they are again shown together in the same car endlessly waiting at the checkpoint parking lot holding hands, and caressing each other's fingers. But this is probably done in imagination and not in reality.
The couple (ES and Manal Khaderi) is forced to wait at the parking lot at the Israeli check post; ES blows a balloon with Yasser Arafat's sketch on it and lets it go through the window of his car. The balloon, rising higher and higher, crosses the Israeli check post and, finally, gets stuck at the steeple of the Dome of the Rock.
All these are no meaningless fantasies, but symbolism utilised by the filmmaker to drive home the nature of reality in Palestine today. However weak and disorganised may the Palestinian resistance be, the spirit of the people is indestructible, and has ultimately to be acknowledged for the welfare of both the nations. Suleiman does show all these very masterfully and poignantly without ever taking recourse to any hate campaign in the slightest measure. That, above everything else, distinguishes him as a true artiste and a great filmmaker.