This micro-indie (currently playing on only 17 screens across the nation) is one of those quiet stunners that sneaks up on you. It’s about a successful, “assimilated” Palestinian surgeon working in an Israeli hospital in Tel Aviv. He’s one of the few Palestinians who have successfully integrated into the Israeli elite and he’s seen getting a prestigious medical award in the first scene. The problem comes when his wife is killed in a suicide bombing…Then the problems really pile up when it’s revealed she was the bomber.
What Works: I’ve seen several documentaries and docudramas about tensions in Israel told through the Palestinian prospective (Paradise Now, Ajami, Five Broken Cameras) so I was wondering what new insight this film would bring into the conflict, and it really doesn’t. As the doctor goes on an increasingly dangerous journey into Palestinian territory, his wife’s motives only gradually become less elusive, pealed back like an onion he’ll never really get to the center of.
The good news is that this film actually works better as a more universal story. By asking a really fundamental question (“Who am I married to?”) it could just as easily be set anywhere. The power and emotionally stunning ending aren’t specific to Middle Eastern conflicts.
There’s also a sly, literary-like arc of having a respected surgeon who’s somewhat outgrown Palestinian politics be yanked back down into it by his wife’s hidden fanaticism. As he tries to get meetings with shady clerics and duplicitous sheiks, a heart-of-darkness journey progresses.
What Doesn’t Work: The lead character is proud, stubborn, and more than a little bit frustrating. He walks into even the most dangerous scenes like a bull in a china shop, and even though this is mostly due to his very-understandable emotional stress, I have a hard time believing someone wouldn’t be a bit cagier in the circumstances. He says he wants answers, but why confront people he has no leverage over in such a way that will guarantee he won’t get them?
What I Would Have Done Differently: The lead performance isn’t vulnerable enough to really let us inside the character, and he plays a one-note anger a little too much. Also, his wife is kept at such an arm’s length we don’t even feel we know the version of her that she presented to him, let alone the real one.