Elia Suleiman's Divine Intervention was feted at Cannes, writes Wael Abdel-Fattah The surprising thing about Elia Suleiman's film Divine Intervention -- which won both the Jury and International Critics' Prizes at Cannes -- is not its pro-Palestinian resistance stand but rather the manner in which his dispersed stories are gently, rhythmically narrated over an hour and a half without falling into the declamatory trap one might expect in a film that deals with the Arab world's dominant political cause. Arab films, unlike Iranian and Latin American productions, usually receive scant attention at international festivals, a trend Suleiman's film has comprehensively bucked. The very title of the film created confused expectations on the part of the viewer. No one knew what to expect, and the filmmaker, Suleiman, has a history of controversy. A Palestinian from the areas occupied by Israel in 1948, he is an Israeli citizen, bearing the nationality of his oppressors. He was born in Nazareth in 1960 to a prominent Orthodox family. Interestingly however, his mother insisted he study the Qur'an at a young age to improve his Arabic. This education was interrupted when Israeli authorities issued an order forcing Christians back to Christian schools under the claim of protecting the Christian minority, aiming, of course, to drive wedges among the Palestinian community. And so the people of Nazareth came to be isolated, developed a fear of speaking Arabic, and a fear of the unknown further, a fear of surveillance. In this atmosphere of fear 15 year-old Elia left school, spending most of his time on the street. He tells stories of adventures of a boy on the streets, a boy under siege in his own city, in the midst of a conservative religious family. The police would send his father daily reports on his activities and his older brother fails to find a job; he is overqualified in computer science, a field then the preserve of the military. Normal life seemed like a distant dream to the young boy, a dream he hoped for with every visitor coming from America. Perhaps he could be smuggled to that other life. The street was where he discovered a magical underworld of young thieves, old school friends of his. He witnessed their petty thefts and shared the dangers of street life until a neighbour who works with the Mossad warned him to flee before the gang was arrested. The adolescent Elia wanted to flee from the countryside to the big city which, for a Palestinian young man, meant two choices -- either Tel Aviv or the airport. Elia would once recall: "I chose the airplane -- any promise of another place that I don't know. In Nazareth people used to run in fear when one of them started talking about daily life under occupation... even my father never told me the story of his life." Elia left in 1983 on a journey that took him from London to Paris and then New York during which he discovered a talent to tell stories. At first this was a way to prove himself; later it turned into a hobby and a way of dealing with the world. He learned about cinema untraditionally, through watching hundreds of films and then through lectures and studies at universities and institutes and ultimately by making films himself, acting, writing, directing and producing them. Elia Suleiman returned to his hometown Nazareth in 1993 and later moved to Jerusalem to found the Department of Film and Media at Bir Zeit University with European funding. Suleiman's first film, A Register of Disappearance (1997) created a stir when first released. The ending of the film was deemed offensive; an Israeli flag flies high on the screen while an old Palestinian sleeps deeply. The fact that the film received funding from Israeli institutions contributed to the charges of treason directed at it. Yet despite the condemnation of Arab critics it won a prize at the Venice Festival. The critics warmed up to Suleiman last year, however, when his film Cyber Palestine was screened at Cannes. He won even more support when he went on stage announcing: "I was never with any authority, but I am now with the Palestinian Authority against Fascist practices." So what would this Palestinian filmmaker, with Israeli citizenship and American acculturation, argue in Divine Intervention? Scant attention has been paid to the subtitle Elia Suleiman gave his film -- The Chronicles of Love and Pain -- even though it holds the key to the film. From the very first scene the film avoids direct discourse on the Palestinian cause and current events. The chronicles set the tempo of the film which records the daily habits and routines of a group of people living in Nazareth through the watchful eye of the camera. This eye is also the memory of the young protagonist of the film now living a love story doomed under occupation. The filmmaker does not resort to traditional flashback techniques but instead relies on the idea of memory coexisting with reality, imagination with truth. They are chronicles, then, in which times intersect and where narrative depends on free association without any logical order or connections save this childish eye that at once sees and remembers the world. There is no central event in the narratives, only common stories that reveal their secrets only after several days. There is an old man who collects empty bottles on the roof of his home. We learn the following day that he uses these to defend himself from his neighbours who trespass over the land in front of his home trying to build a garage for their car. There is a young man waiting at the bus stop. Another man comes out of the house next door to tell him that buses no longer pass from there. One day he replies that he knows. And on another day he completes the story; the young man is in love with a girl who comes out on the balcony. When the scene is repeated for the fourth time we see him write on the wall: "I am crazy because I love you." And so all the stories unfold. The man upset with the world sits at home and opens letters. The chair falls back with him. In a third scene we see him at his workshop, in a fourth we see him beating up a man who ruined his son's ball, and then we learn that he is the man lying in the hospital bed... and then he dies. Repetition turns tragedy into comedy. The scenes are shot with a camera that zooms in and out exposing the emptiness and absurdity that a nation in waiting has to live. In the opening scene there are children running after Santa Claus (recalling the gang of children in Suleiman's real life) and it turns out that they're not after presents, they just enjoy running after him. Santa is like them; poor, exploited and on the run. This scene is followed by other similarly choreographed ones using video clip techniques. Thus a group of Israeli soldiers in civil uniform train to shoot using a masked Palestinian woman as a training target. The woman is the resistance. She turns into a Ninja fighter capable of facing attacks with inner strength, defeating the soldiers and their overwhelming weapons. The shield that protects her is the map of Palestine and Palestinian blood on the ground turns into the map of Palestine. These scenes look like images drawn by childish consciousness, or rather a consciousness in a childish stage seeing and experiencing the world in a disorderly fashion, one governed by surprise, questioning and spontaneity. This is clear in one scene where the young protagonist of the film, wishing to express his anger, fills a balloon with helium. The balloon has an image of Yasser Arafat printed on it. It flies and crosses the border between Jerusalem and Ramallah, driving fear in the hearts of the Isreali soldiers who prepare to shoot it down. But in the end they let it fly over and it rises higher, moving from the church to the streets and finally settling on top of the Dome of the Rock. The scene is open to multiple interpretations. The balloon could be the symbol of freedom that the military policies of Israel will never hold back. And because it carries an image of Arafat it could be an acknowledgement of the leader as a symbol. It is also a statement on Arafat's presence -- like an air- filled balloon. But the scene ends with the balloon on top of the Dome of the Rock, which must be a positive sign. The scene uncovers the hallucinations and imaginations of childhood. This is positive hallucination that records instances when consciousness is revealed. This is where the protagonist and the filmmaker meet -- together they understand the Palestinian predicament in a manner different from that engrained in the memory of the Palestinian born under Israeli administration, and different from that of the traveller to America. Fantasy is the result of amazing consciousness. And so the first appearance by the protagonist (played by Elia Suleiman himself) is in a scene where he is driving his car. When he throws the seed of an apricot he's eaten at an Israeli tank it explodes. When Israeli forces refuse to allow Palestinians to pass through road blocks a beautiful woman (she is also the heroine of the film and the masked woman -- in the end all the images seem to be scenes from dreams or day dreams) passes through defying the guns and orders. Divine Intervention achieves a direct relationship with a very diversified audience by using irony and fantasy. Most could react to the striking visuals and a narrative unburdened by discourse and ideology. But despite this absence of comprehensive discourse the "message" of the film was not lost. A tourist stops at a police van in Jerusalem to enquire about the location of a church. The policeman doesn't know. A blindfolded Palestinian at the back of the car has to come forward to show her the way. The tourist comes back again to enquire about the Aqsa Mosque. The policeman doesn't know. He looks for the blindfolded Palestinian only to discover he has fled. Dialogue is present only as a background and sometimes as a connecting tool. Yet repetition creates a vicious circle. When the Israeli soldier decides to prevent Palestinian cars from passing through the road block and orders them to return, the cars seen from a distance appear to be moving in a labyrinth. When the same soldier decides to have some fun at the block he starts issuing orders through the loud speakers in a voice close to a dictator's in an absurd play. He likes a Palestinian man's jacket and decides to keep it for himself; he orders another out of one car to drive another, he orders a third to drive his friend's car. It is a scary circle; you feel it, you laugh at it, but you can't escape its bitterness. The film ends after the father's death, with the young man sitting beside his mother, both waiting for something far away. The mother points to the pressure cooker and asks him to turn it off. The air has become too pressured, it is about to explode. Related stories: Cannes can deliver 30 May - 5 June 2002 A little bit of luck 9 - 15 May 2002
