A Separation [Iran, 2011]

To those uninitiated into global cinema, it may come as a surprise that Iran consistently cranks out great art films. I’ve probably seen a dozen or so and now find myself constantly on the lookout for the latest cinematic offerings from Iran. I heard about A Separation before it was even  nominated for the Academy Award because of a good friend of mine that’s Iranian. His family had told him to keep an eye out for it and knowing what a film buff I am he suggested it to me too. Needless to say, the film did not come to Birmingham in a theatrical release and after it won the Best Foreign Picture Oscar it was just a waiting game for when it would eventually come out on DVD. And what it wait it was. Well over a year after it’s release it finally made it to DVD in the US a few weeks ago.

A Separation, as you might guess from the title, is about a married couple parting ways. Samin’s spent countless time and a lot of money on visas to get the family to be able to live abroad. Nader’s father now has Alzheimer’s and he’s not budging. Sounds simple enough right? But they have a daughter that complicates matters. Simin wants the daughter to go abroad with her as they’re very close, so the daughter stays with her dad because she knows her mom won’t leave without her. Bold move for a kid, but she was correct. Samin did not travel abroad.

Nader must now find someone to care for his elderly father while he’s at work and the daughter is at school and he chooses a lower income woman who comes to work around the house with her small daughter. This is when the trouble arrives. The newly arrived help has a miscarriage shortly after she is fired (after 2 or 3 days when Nader discovered she was leaving his father at home unattended) and goes to the police to blame it on her former employer. That’s the setup for the incredible amount of problem it causes both families. The film explores the dynamics of both families and how they come together to deal with this unforeseen tragedy. Needless to say, it’s incredibly heavy, but it’s almost like a suspenseful thriller in that you have no idea how things are going to play out for everyone involved. The Oscars are generally a waste of time to me, but they often do a great job with Best Foreign Picture category and 2011 is no exception. This was definitely a film that deserved all of the lavish praise heaped upon it.

TRAILER:

Distant [Turkey, 2002]

I’m not going to pretend to know a ton about Turkish film, but I have enjoyed the small handful that I’ve seen. Turkey is a place I’m infinitely fascinated by (especially Istanbul.) I fully intend to delve deeply into Turkish cinema at some point after I complete this project. I figured Distant would be stark given the title and the bleak, wintery landscape on the poster, but I didn’t know it’d be beyond bleak.

Yusuf, a young factory worker from the countryside loses his job in a layoff as a result of a major, nationwide recession. His older cousin, Mahmut, lives in Istanbul and leads a comfortable life as a corporate photographer (he mainly photographs tile for a manufacturer.) Mahmut enjoys artistic photography, but it doesn’t pay the bills so he engages in mundane work but is paid well for it. He has a large apartment in the city with a huge study, a studio, a scenic view, etc. Yusuf, like so many before him, flees to the city in hopes of economic fortunes (he wants to become a ship worker.) Mahmut agrees to put Yusuf up for a while until he can get on his feet. It become apparent very quickly though that Mahmut has no real prospects. It’s the middle of winter and there’s no hiring in the shipping industry. Yusuf meanders about aimlessly and appears content to stay at Mahmut’s apartment in his spare bedroom.

Mahmut, an independent man, grows weary of Yusuf’s presence shortly after his arrival and the two begin to annoy each other rather quickly. They try taking a trip together to bond, but it doesn’t work at all. Family obligation wins out though and the two tolerate each other’s existence. The longer this drags on, the more Mahmut becomes irritated and his solitary existence is somehow heightened by the presence of another person. He seemed lonely before, but his loneliness is unbearable in the presence of another person. The gorgeous, but stark winter landscapes of Istanbul highlight the isolation even more.

I was quite into the film at first despite the long silences (it is probably 7-8 minutes before the first word is spoken in the film), but after a while it became tiresome. If the filmmakers objective was to draw you into the awkward and uncomfortable tensions in the apartment, then he did a masterful job. The actors all did a superb job (the two leads both split the best actor award at Cannes) and it’s beautifully filmed, but I simply lost interest in the unsympathetic characters after a while. It did a bang up job of showing the loneliness and mundane nature of much of modern life. I liked it okay. I didn’t hate it by any means, but didn’t enjoy it enough to recommend. It had a powerful overall message, but I don’t feel like it really delivered on it well. Kind of surprised to see that it picked up so many accolades, but hey, to each his own I suppose.

TRAILER: Distant

The Human Resources Manager [Israel, 2010]

Yulia, a Romanian guest worker in Israel is killed by a suicide bomber in Jerusalem. Her body lays unclaimed in a morgue for over a week and when it’s reported by a local journalist, it turns into a public relations disaster for her employer, a large bakery/factory. Yulia has no family in Israel and the burden of what to do with her body falls to her employer. The bakery’s owner determines that the only proper course of action is to have the company’s human resources manager escort the body back to Romania and to deliver it to her family. He is, unsurprisingly, less than thrilled with the assigned task. His marriage is crumbling, his relationship with his middle school aged daughter is strained and he’s screwing up at work. In his estimation, a grim trip to Romania is the last thing he needs.

Through every step of the process, the Human Resources Manager (only the deceased, Yulia, is ever called by a name in the film) is aiming to unload the body and disentangle himself from this mess as soon as possible. Through various bureaucratic nightmares, he’s not able to do so and once on the ground has to transport the body over 900 kilometers to Yulia’s mother. It turns into a road movie and a rather dark one in which one man is trying to extract himself from the situation, a journalist is trying to make a name for himself off of the story and Yulia’s son is grieving and tempestuous. As the trip lingers on longer than expected due to snowy weather and a van with mechanical problems, their various selfish motives for being on the trip begin to erode and they’re all seeking a higher purpose. It sounds pretty straightforward, but there are unexpected moments along the way.  It’s a rather moving, but quiet film about one man’s transition from hard-hearted selfishness to a more humanistic, compassionate outlook on life.

TRAILER: The Human Resources Manager

I normally offer no commentary on trailers, but I’d say this one is poorly done. It’s cut to make it look like some kind of zany comedy at times and that’s far from the truth.

Under the Bombs [Lebanon, 2006]

This is, without a doubt, the most personal film for me in the project so far. Under the Bombs is set during and just after the 2006 Israeli bombing of Lebanon. First and foremost, I have a friend from college that lives in Beirut so I was worried for his and his family’s safety. Secondly, in the spring of 2006 I was starting to consider places to do internships for my master’s coursework and through said college friend, I was going to seriously try to do my internship in Beirut. The plan was to knock the internship out in about six to eight weeks: work four days a week and spend the other three taking trips throughout Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan and finishing things off with a trip to Armenia and/or Israel before heading back to the United States. And then the bombing happened.

Needless to say, being faced with possibility of being hit by missiles gives one a rather long pause when considering an internship in a place with a high potential for becoming a war zone. After thinking about it for a while, I abandoned the idea of the internship there because it just didn’t seem stable enough at the time to go. Turns out it would’ve been fine, but I think it was the right choice based on the information I had at the time. Anyway, on to the film…

Zeina and her family are Lebanese, but live in Dubai. She and her husband are divorcing and they’ve sent their son Karim back to their village in southern Lebanon to live with her sister while they sort out the messy details of their separation. Enter a bunch of Israeli missiles fired into civilian areas and Zeina heads back to Lebanon to find her sister and son since she can’t reach them via telephone. She has to enter the country via a circuitous route because of Israeli control of the airport and seaports. Once in Beirut she searches for a taxi driver to take her south, but no one will go citing how dangerous it is. Eventually her persistence pays off and a cabbie named Tony agrees to drive her after demanding an incredibly hefty fee for the trek. Zeina is incensed at the high fee, but as Tony tells her “I’m not risking my life for nothing.”

Needless to say, trying to find someone in the aftermath of repeated bombing is a difficult prospect. Infrastructure is decimated (they repeatedly come upon bombed out bridges and have to change routes), communications range from non-existent to undependable. Misinformation is everywhere. It’s utter chaos and Zeina feels like she’s on a wild goose chase. As they continue on through problem after problem after problem and misdirection after misdirection Tony begins to soften and becomes a helping hand and not merely a hired hand. I don’t want to spoil the ending, but it’s an incredibly moving road movie about two strangers drawn together by the most horrific of circumstances.

The incredible thing about this film is that it uses only two profession actors (Zeina and Tony) and was filmed during the war. This blurb from the film’s official site really sums up the urgency and gritty reality of the film:

Under the Bombs is a visceral expression of anger and pain from a Lebanese man who could no longer tolerate seeing his country ransacked by war. This war began on July 12th 2006. Ten days later, in the most precarious of circumstances, Phillipe Aractingi began shooting “under the bombs.” He only hired two actors. The rest of the characters in the film: refugees, journalists, soldiers, religious people, and militants all played their own roles. All of them, caught in the turmoil and the ruins of war-torn Lebanon. All living this new tragedy as an intimate part of themselves.

I’d strongly urge anyone to watch this film. It’s remarkable seeing the hell reigned down on a civilian population by war. It really hammers home the nightmarish toll civilians bear during wartime. Horrific and powerful stuff. I sincerely hope Lebanon is spared this nightmare in the future. It’s particularly hard watching this as an American knowing my country helps fund and/or arm these bombing campaigns.

TRAILER: UNDER THE BOMBS

The Time That Remains [Palestine, 2009]

Elia Suleiman’s The Time That Remains is drastically different than any other film I’ve seen dealing with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. There’s no overt vitriol nor is there a sentimental “we can all be one big shiny, happy family” tone. Furthermore, Suleiman offers no simple solutions to the problem. There is, however, a cool sense of detachment in the storytelling and a deadpan sense of humor that makes the message of the film more powerful than if it had relied on more dramatic emotions.

Primarily set in Nazareth, the film begins in 1948 with the city surrendering to Israeli forces. The primary character in the early part of the film is Suleiman’s father, Fuad, played wonderfully by Saleh Bakri. Fuad is detained, beaten and left for dead by the Israeli army and that really kind of sets the tone for the film. Fuad was initially quite defiant but eventually becomes more resigned to his fate and that of his family and the Palestinians in general. It shows the little hassles of life, like Fuad and his friend repeatedly getting harassed by the Israeli army for simply going fishing. The focus eventually shifts to Fuad’s son, Elia (the filmmaker.) I’m not familiar with Suleiman’s life story, but the film is based upon Fuad’s diaries and the letters of his mother (there are quite a few scenes of her writing letters) as well as his personal experiences living in Israel as a Palestinian.

The film comes off as powerful meditation on Palestinian life in Israel. It deals with heavy themes and gives the viewer much to ponder, but it doesn’t do it in a way that’s preachy or heavy-handed. It is the first of Suleiman’s films that I’ve seen, but it definitely won’t be the last.