I’m sandwiching my weekend with two foreign films; other than having seen both previews, this is all else I knew going in, from NPR:
“Audiences are being offered an intriguing exercise in double vision over the next couple of weeks: two movies about Palestinian informants and their complicated relationships with Israel’s secret service, one directed by a Palestinian, the other by an Israeli. Their similarities turn out to be nearly as intriguing as their differences.”
Friday’s movie was Omar, the Palestinian offering. What an intriguing film this is. First, I must admit that I am woefully ignorant regarding the details of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. This was a bit of a disadvantage in watching the film, as I did not understand much of the setting: who is walled in and/or out? Which side is which? Who are the occupiers and who are the occupied and just what do those who rebel, rebel against—the occupying itself or the insistence that more than mere occupation occur? Yes, the back of my mind stayed quite busy as I watched.
In spite of these tugs and mental questions and aside thoughts, I wasn’t prevented in any sense of being intrigued with the story playing out on the screen: love, betrayal, friendship, family, honor, war, survival and more. I wondered how people can live day to day with shots being fired around them, so much, and for so long, that it simply becomes not an issue of survival but instead just a part of life. And normal. I was smitten with Nadia and the love between her and Omar. I was nauseated by betrayal and torture and calculated killing. And I was torn, watching a plot play out, wanting goodness to fall upon Omar and Nadia, yet unsure of what he stood for. Or why. But I ached for his despair as he says, “We all believed the unbelievable.”
I greatly appreciated the many differences of Omar from some of the other films I’ve seen and novels I’ve read in the last few years that are set in the Middle East. Although military conflict seems a constant, a bit of progress is here made regarding women and their role in society. (I didn’t say it was enough progress, but it is some.) On the other hand, torture seems to know no boundaries. I never will understand how a human can treat another human in such ways. Although this makes me happy not to understand how it happens, I suppose it makes me wiser for understanding that it does happen.
The movie’s greatness is that I felt like I did more than watch it; there was an experience.
The movie carried on for a while, setting up these characters’ lives and connections. Then a hard left was made, and the audience fell silent. At that point, had this been a cartoon, we simultaneously would have all leaned in toward the movie, as I was (and it seemed the rest of the near-capacity theater was) captivated with the story on the screen. And as the movie ended, erupting into the loudest silence I may have ever heard, we sat, almost not breathing for a moment before we began to rustle about, catching our breath and trying to process all that we had seen.
Two days later, the movie still sits heavily in me. I’m even more interested in seeing the other offering later this afternoon. Thoughts on that, of course, to come later.