Laughing in the face of terror (Filed: 16/01/2003) The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the unlikely subject of one of the funniest films of the moment. SF Said talks to its director, Elia Suleiman
Divine Intervention is like no other film you've ever seen. One part silent comedy, one part art movie, one part political dynamite, it has earned its writer-director-star, Elia Suleiman, comparisons with the great comedians of cinema, giants such as Buster Keaton and Jacques Tati. But, while it's one of the funniest films around, it's also a lot more than that. Elia Suleiman: has faced misunderstanding and trouble from all sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Released here tomorrow, it won two prizes at Cannes last summer, establishing Suleiman as one of the world's leading film-makers. A 42-year-old Palestinian, he is self-taught, and this is only his second film. Yet already he shows a fully formed, wholly original cinematic sensibility. "I never studied film," he says. "I hadn't seen Tati or Keaton until after I made my first feature. I left school when I was 17; I was a street kid, doing nothing. But then I went to New York, and for a year I did nothing but read books and see films, three films a day sometimes." Perhaps this is why Divine Intervention looks and feels like nothing else . It is a mosaic of beautifully composed tableaux about Palestinian life under Israeli rule. Suleiman is not interested in the speech-making and slogans that dominate Middle East politics. He is fascinated, instead, by the absurd and surreal; by the little and not-so-little bits of human business that never make it on to the news about the Middle East. The very first scene of the film shows Santa Claus being mugged by some children on a Nazareth hill-top. It's ridiculous, and hilarious - until you ask yourself what it might mean. "I think it works because it announces from the beginning the inner violence of Nazareth," says Suleiman. "Something must be really wrong in this place. After that, you can understand why nobody speaks, why there's this total disintegration of all social communication." All the characters in Divine Intervention move around in a precise, poker-faced choreography in which things are forever going wrong. People wait for buses that never come. Grumpy old men stab children's footballs. Characters nurse spectacular fantasies of revenge and violence that only highlight their impotence in real life. These scenes found their way from Suleiman's notebooks into his film. "I carry notebooks everywhere I go," he explains. "I write all sorts of things in them - all the realities I pass through. If I see some sort of potential choreography in a daily banality, it tickles me, so I note it because it's funny." What makes Divine Intervention not just comic but genuinely important is the resonance such scenes have when you put them all together. They raise searching questions about the Palestine situation, not in any kind of hectoring way, but through their humour and open-ended texture. Suleiman was born and grew up in Nazareth, which has been part of the state of Israel since 1948. Although he has lived abroad, and has strong connections with the film-making worlds of Paris and New York, his work is firmly rooted in Palestinian experience. Divine Intervention's central preoccupation is peace and how the lack of it poisons people's lives, their relationships, even their dreams. But, as a maker of art not propaganda, Suleiman has faced misunderstanding and trouble from all sides. It started with his first film, Chronicle of a Disappearance, which won the prize for best debut at Venice in 1996, yet was tabooed in the Arab world. "Even now," he says, "I read an article in the Arab press, criticising Divine Intervention for being ironic and not respecting the Palestinians." Equally, he has run into repeated obstruction from the Israeli authorities. After endless difficulties making Chronicle of a Disappearance, he delegated the job of obtaining the necessary permissions for Divine Intervention to an Israeli friend. "He set up a sort of front company and got the permissions," says Suleiman. "They wouldn't have given it to me." The cast and crew of Divine Intervention included both Arabs and Israelis. Ironically, however, neither Arab nor Israeli money went into it. The film was financed mainly from France, and it was made even as bloody conflict was raging between Israelis and Palestinians. "We had a very insecure time," he says. "We couldn't start shooting because the Israelis were shooting. They were occupying our decor, and putting their own decor. We didn't always manage. The Israeli police came and broke the set a couple of times. They were disturbed by the humour." The last scene in the film is perhaps the most eloquent. It's a simple, static shot of a pressure cooker sitting atop an oven, accompanied by the words: "That's enough: stop it now." Does he think there is any hope for peace between Israelis and Palestinians? "The only way I can see it working is if Israel becomes just another normal secular democratic state," he says. "Similarly, when people ask me what it means to have a Palestinian state, I think it means the end of occupation. I'm uninterested in anything called national, but I think there is an absolute need for a Palestinian state, simply because it means the soldier and the tank are no longer at the doorstep, and the children can go to school." Despite all the difficulties, Suleiman got his film made and is now winning over audiences around the world. There have been no screenings yet in Palestinian or Israeli cities, because of the conflict. "At the New York Film Festival," he says, "I was worried after September 11 that a Palestinian film might be booed before it's seen. Some of the audience were Jewish, and some had affiliation to the state of Israel. But my preconceptions were proved utterly wrong: it was a great response. I know it sound presumptuous, but I think the film criss-crossed boundaries. That's what cinema can do; maybe that's what laughter can achieve." 16 November 2002: The human face of Islam [Islamic film makers] 23 May 2002: About an old boy [Divine Intervention at the Cannes Festival]
