"Your movie about Palestine is not the movie we want to do about Palestine." That message gives a French, anxious film company person to Palestinian-Israeli director Elia Suleiman in a meeting about the film we are watching at the same time. It is an extremely metaphorical perspective, completely absurd and more fun than I manage to present here.
This movie about Palestine begins in Nazareth where Elia Suleiman was born. Someone has just died (his mother?) And as a big, amazed child he looks at his surroundings with his eyes closed. One neighbor steals unashamed lemons from his tree, another pulls insane fables, two Israeli gangsters spread terror at a restaurant, a woman fights with the irrigation in an olive grove and Suleiman looks at everything without saying a shrug.
Eventually, he leaves this microcosm to his hometown, which is saturated with screwed symbols of Israel and Palestine. He goes to Paris to find a film company for the movie we see, after combing zero there he goes on to New York. Constantly seeking and considering. Everywhere a stranger.
Something is very fun and even thought provoking. As the French film company manager mentioned above explains to Suleiman why they reject the project with a fantastic interpretation of the company's expectations of a story about Palestine. Or the visual humor in almost every box, straight-on angles and centered, symmetrical motifs, in the same buster-keatonic silent film tradition that Wes Andersson also works in.
The pictures are packed with messages. I'm guessing about an almost symbiotic collaboration with photographer Sofian El Fani. Since Suleiman obviously does not make exactly the right Palestinian film about Palestine, the matter is not entirely clear, which is refreshing and confusing. Tanks in a desolate Paris, a chased angel wearing the Palestinian flag in Central Park and meticulous police officers with tape measure and segways (the long arm of the team should obviously review their priorities) speak a pretty clear language. What a long, unashamed sexist scene where Suleiman looks at women's bodies under short skirts in Paris, on the other hand, is more than blurry.
For the most part, it's still fun at the moment. Suleiman has humor that can almost be described as a hybrid between silent slapstick and Roy Andersson. But to get the pieces together, this must have been a good measure of grinding to clarity in some parts and allowing themselves to be more subtle in others. Whatever your expectations of a movie about and from Palestine.
It must be heaven also premieres on May 8 at the cinema and VOD.