esrosedotblog

SILENT MOVIE

Today's film, Palestinian Elia Suleiman's

Divine Intervention: A Chronicle of Love and Pain (2002)

is not silent, per se, but has all the elements of pantomime and silent comedy.

Taken at three locations in the Palestinian Israeli mish mash, people act out small vignettes that have to do with every day life.

Perhaps these can be construed as a metaphor for political issues. One entire segment centers around an Israeli checkpoint. But it is putting too much weight on it. Or, perhaps too little.

These are, after all, everyday situations of neighborly competition and cooperation.

A man provokes the authorities until they act, then uses the opportunity to attack them. On one ten.

A neighbor throws his garbage into another neighbor's yard. She throws them back in his yard. Four guys are seen beating something just out of sight. A person? No. A snake. Dead before he finally gets the burning gasoline treatment. Overkill.

See? They make no sense in isolation.

But shown together, in sequence, they somehow make a statement of life's absurdities as well as the pleasures.

There is a great spot where, at the checkpoint, a soldier comes and makes a kind of night club act out of stopping and inspecting the cars. It makes about the same sense as the day to day business of the checkpoint does.

I liked it. There is no story. No point that I could discern. Just a collection of small acts of absurdity, some cruelty and occasional kindness.

A great sequence where the red balloon film is given a tribute as another red balloon flies over Jerusalem. It has Arafat's picture on it and lands on the Temple on the Mount. Last laugh.

Winner of some juried Cannes prizes.

I will give it a 3 out of Netflix5.

Labels: films