Lemon Tree: Solitude in the Middle East

Eran Riklis's most recent film, Lemon Tree (Etz Limon), is a collaboration between Israeli and Palestinian creative forces that observes the strained relationship between these two peoples.

Salma (Hiam Abbass) is a widow who lives for her lemon grove, which she tends to with the help of her friend Abu Hussam (Tarik Kopty). However, after the Israeli Defense Minister, Israel Navon (Doron Tavory) and his wife move in next door, her grove is declared a security risk and most be uprooted. Salma hires young lawyer Ziad (Ali Suliman) to sue the Israeli government for the right to keep her lemons.

The film is based on a true story and tackles the touchy subject of Israeli destruction of Palestinian homes. Riklis isn't new to controversy, having directed the critically acclaimed film The Syrian Bride (2004) about a family living in the disputed territory of the Golan Heights.

Riklis claimed that Lemon Tree would be his last say on the matter, so to speak, regarding the Middle East conflict. He definitely plays it safe in the film with characters that are all victims, and yet all villains at the same time. They are all wrong and all correct, with perhaps the exception of Salma, who is the innocent doe trapped in the midst of brutality.

Instead of pointing blame, Riklis rather contemplates the notion of loneliness. All his characters are lonely, having either built walls around themselves (both figuratively and literally) or had walls involuntarily built around them.

Salma lives alone with her lemon grove. A widow, her children are too busy or too far away and strict cultural tradition forbids her from associating with men, as demonstrated by the character Abu Kamal (Makram Khoury).

Her counterpart would be Mira, the wife of the Defense Minister. After moving to the border with her husband, she is left at home while he works, surrounded by guards and hardly able to look out her window without an official escort.

Over time, Mira learns to pity and empathize with Salma. Although the two only meet once and speak only a few words to each other, an unlikely bond forms between the two women, both bound by restrictions and loneliness.

Salma does not win her case, but the judge amends the orders so that only half her trees are chopped down. As Ziad points out, this is actually a great victory since it is the first time an Arab suing the Israeli government has managed to change anything at all. She may be a hero to all Palestinians fighting to keep their land and homes, but the stark image of a half- barren lemon grove feels more like the glass is half empty, not half full.

The Defense Minister himself is unaware of his loneliess, convincing himself throughout the film that he is justified to order the descruction of the lemon grove and ignoring the warning signs of his wife's growing isolation. By the end of the film, he is more alone than any other character: his wife has left him and the wall he was eager to have built around his home blocks any visitors, intruders or any signs of life.

So who is to blame for this perpetual unhappiness? It would be easiest to try and blame the Defense Minister, but was he not simply doing the job assigned to him? Salma seems like the most obvious victim, but her reluctance to compromise or negotiated is matched only by the Israeli government.

As it were, the biggest culprit here is a collective failure to communicate. It is as if Riklis wants us to acknowledge the suffering of all parties involved, from the hapless and young soldier keeping watch over the lemon grove to the widow about to lose her entire livelihood, as though these are all equal forms of suffering so that there is no right or wrong side to the conflict.

Frankly, this is a higly political and safe stance to assume. While at first it seems Riklis is being bold and controversial, Lemon Tree proves to be less explosive and more meager.

This is not to say Riklis has not made a good point. His characters have gotten so caught up in a history's worth of conflict and failed diplomacy that they have forgotten how to simply speak to each other. Indeed, the volatile Palestinian-Israeli confict could do with a mediator or two, but Lemon Tree only points out this fact and does not try and offer a solution.

In regard to aesthetics, Lemon Tree has Riklis's familiar romantic-realist style filled with long takes, location shooting and topped with a dreamy quality that laces certain scenes, such as in the court room where the camera revolves slowly to capture the poetic words of Abu Hussam.

Photo Caption: L to R Tarik Copty, Hiam Abbass and Ali Suliman in Lemon Tree

Photo courtesy of lemontreemovie.com

Divine Intervention: Humor as Resistance

This week, I wanted to build from the last post on Chronicle of a Disappearance to discuss another Elia Suleiman film: Divine Intervention.

Released in 2002, Divine Intervention was Palestine's official entry for the Academy Awards. However, the film was rejected because the Oscars only consider films from countries recognized as a nation by the United Nations, which Palestine was not. This would later be contradicted when Hany Abu-Assad's film Paradise Now is nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006.

Much like Chronicle of a Disappearance, Divine Intervention is composed of a series of short vignettes of the everyday life of Palestinians. It is a surreal black comedy that frequently switches between fantasy and reality.

Scenes are as simple as a long take of a man opening his mail in the morning, to an elaborate sequence involving a red balloon with Yasser Arafat's face on it inexplicably inflating and floating across the border.

Suleiman continuously pulls his audience in many directions, and the rapid shifts in tone and style are often humorous, but in a strange and nonsensical way.

In the films climax, a group of Israeli soldiers are doing target practice with cardboard cutouts of Arab woman. After shooting two rounds in a choreographed dance routine, one of the cutouts comes alive. This "Arab ninja" repels bullets, flings stones at rapid speed, and conjures up a shield in the shape of Israel and Palestinian territories, which she uses to destroy a helicopter after taking out the entire group of soldiers.

This represents the daydream quality of Divine Intervention. Suleiman's forays into the surreal are moments of wishful thinking, such as the "Arab ninja" who single handily takes down soldiers without any guns or sophisticated weaponry. Suleiman captures the spirit of Palestinian resistance to occupation through fantasy and surrealism.

This leads to the greater question of cinematic resistance in an occupied region. Suleiman is a Palestinian-Israeli and his films are made in both Israel and Palestine. So would his film be considered part of Israeli cinema or Palestinian cinema? Arguments can be made for both, however, it is generally accepted that Divine Intervention is clearly a work of Palestinian cinema because of its subject-matter, director, and actors (most of whom are non-professional and are friends or family of Suleiman).

For me, what makes Divine Intervention a Palestinian film is its cinematic style. Suleiman combines low-budget techniques, such as long-takes and amateur actors, with special effects to create his absurdist vision of reality. There are infinite interpretations of each of the vignette's possible political or social meaning, but the bottom line is that Suleiman is trying to make us laugh.

In an interview, Suleiman says that his inspiration for his films are small things that make him laugh. He takes these simple things, such as a story of his lead actress (Manal Khader) ignoring the commands of Israeli soldiers and just walking past a checkpoint to get into Jerusalem for a lunch date, and amplifies them to the status of the impossible. She reenacts this story in the film , but Suleiman pushes reality into fantasy, and with a glance from her piercing eyes, the soldiers' watch tower topples as she struts past.

The humor in this scene is understated and dark. There is no dialogue, no jokes, and no physical humor. The humor exists in the very notion of a Palestinian woman developing unseen powers to take down a checkpoint. In a country where being Palestinian is a disadvantage and some would say relegates a person to the status of second-class citizen, Suleiman's retelling of Manal's story is painfully wishful.

But Suleiman does this not just to tease Palestinians or indulge escapism. The comedic tone and surrealism of Divine Intervention make it a more digestible reading of the Palestinian situation in Israel and seemingly less bold or agitating. However, Suleiman never loses sight of the social and political issues that shape Palestinian lifestyles and his stories are rooted in this reality. Thus, it is through humor that Suleiman appeals to human emotion to tell stories and give insight into the Palestinian situation.

Divine Intervention theatrical trailer:

Photo Caption: Director Elia Suleiman holds a red balloon with Yasser Arafat's face in Divine Intervention.

Chronicle of a Disappearance: Avante-Garde Palestine

So far, the films I have been discussing are, more or less, part of popular cinema. Some, such as Rana's Wedding, exhibit strong elements of art-cinema, though it still follows a traditional narrative format. In contrast, Elia Suleiman's first feature film, Chronicle of Disappearance (1996), is experimental and abstract in its representation of daily life in Nazareth.

Suleiman directs and stars in this non-narrative examination of a man (Suleiman as himself) who returns to Nazareth after a self-imposed exile in New York. The film is on a quest to discover what it is like to be Palestinian.

The film is segmented into three parts, composed of vignettes of everyday life. Some stories are decidedly incongruous and abstract, while others are more straight-forward in their message. It is hard to classify Chronicle of a Disappearance, as it transcends any notions of genre or plot. It is part fiction and part autobiographical, blending truth and fantasy in hope of uncovering meaning.

The camera rarely moves throughout the film, which is composed mostly of long takes. The audience gets a medium or long shot perspective of any given scene and only sees it from one vantage point; the film is virtually devoid of close-ups. This distances the audience from what takes place on screen and creates a sense of voyeurism.

Some critics have described it as a black comedy because of its nihilistic tone set amongst humorous short tales. I would agree with this label and add that it is a minimalist film in its visual style and cinematography and a psychological drama in its content. The film is best approached by trying to analyze and decipher its parts first, and then synthesizing them to uncover Suleiman's overall message, if there is one at all.

Each scene in Chronicle of a Disappearance is richly symbolic, contributing to the film's absurdity. For example, a wooden camel figurine falls down in a Palestinian-owned souvenir shop in Nazareth. The store owner keeps trying to set it back upright, only for the camel to fall down repeatedly. He leaves for a moment and returns with some tape to prop up the camel, though after he walks out of the frame again, it falls down once more and the scene is over.

This scene can be correctly interpreted for simply what it is--merely a moment in the banal existence of a shop owner who never gets any customers--or it can be read through a metaphorical lens. The camel falling down is a problem for the shop owner that keeps occurring again and again, a metaphor for the problems facing Palestinians generation after generation. By trying to use tape to prop up the camel, the shop owner is using what he thinks is a quick and clever solution for his problem. However, the audience sees the camel fall down again, proving that the problem lies in the camel itself and needs more than a "band-aid" fix.

The film was made following the signing of the Oslo Accords, an agreement signed by Israel and the PLO in 1993 that established the Palestinian Authority, but left out many key issues in the conflict to be addressed at a later time (for more information on the Oslo Accords click here). In light of this historical context, the camel scene can be read as a criticism of the superficiality of the Oslo Accords and its inability to address many of the long-standing issues concerning Palestine.

Of course there is nothing explicit in the camel scene to suggest this is the correct reading, which is one of the more frustrating aspects of Chronicle of a Disappearance. Audiences watch a film expecting to gain some sort of meaning and enlightenment by the end of it, but with Chronicles of a Disappearance, Suleiman betrays this long-standing agreement between film and spectator, and we feel just as lost and unsatisfied by the end of the film as we did when it first began.

Perhaps this was an attempt to reflect the loss and disappointment of the Palestinian people. On the other hand, it could be a comment on the futility of defining Palestinians, or maybe simply the futility of life as a Palestinian.

Suleiman's experimental style is appropriate when applied to his subject-matter: the absurdity and nihilism of Palestinian reality. He forgoes traditional film techniques and creates a cinematic grammar unique to Palestine, which he continues in his next feature film, Divine Intervention, released in 2002.

Without a doubt, Suleiman is the shining example of the avante-garde operating in the Middle East.


Photo Courtesy of Arab Film Distribution