Palestinian director Elia Suleiman tells through his film Divine Intervention, which was screened Monday at Cannes 55th festival, a simple and a complicated story simultaneously. With symbolism and fantasy Suleiman portrayed through it his vision of the Palestinian reality.
The director spends the first 20 minutes of the film in semi separate scenes about life in the Palestinian City of Nazareth. Not all these scenes are beautiful as there is a scene about a man who parks his car in front of his neighbor’s garage while another throws garbage in the gardens of his neighbors.
Suleiman portrays these separate scenes in a satire style and, sometimes, funny styles. In one scene one can see the director himself driving his car while in other scenes he appears eating apricot and throwing the seed from the open window of his car at an Israeli tank, followed by a scene shows the Israeli tank exploding.
The diaries of this man include his meeting with of the girl whom he loves at an Israeli roadblock between Jerusalem and Ramallah (Ram Block). He hates to cross the roadblock to go to his love and she has the same attitude. Probably both of them reject the block and do not want to see it. The most important thing is that they meet at a place overlooking it.
Instead of talking they clasp their hands and look towards the Israeli soldiers who stop the passing by cars. The soldiers permit some motorist to cross and prevent others and even ask some to get out of their cars and order them to raise their hands up without knowing whether they are prisoners of war or free people.
The two lovers do not talk but the hero looks angrily at the scene with complete silence. One day he comes back to the same location carrying a red balloon with the picture of President Arafat on it. He blows the balloon while his love looks at him in an inquiring manner. He opens the window of the car ceiling and releases the balloon in the direction opposite the Israeli roadblock. The soldiers see the balloon and one of them shoots at it but his colleague tries to prevent him and contacts his commander.
The film has another extremely symbolic scene when the film’s hero drives his car parallel to an Israeli motorist at a traffic light. The two exchange deep and long looks full of anger and conflict as if they brawl virtually.
The next shots show two clasping hands but this time these are the hands of a son helping his father ascending. The film’s end features Suleiman and his mother sitting in the kitchen where a pressure cooker is boiling and whistling.
The film is a set of short stories that are not necessarily linked together but in the end it is the story of a homeland which is made by Elia Suleiman victorious on the fascism of the occupation in a scene that belongs to fantasy. The Palestinian girl succeeds, with the help of a “divine intervention”, to kill the enemies in a basic scene that precedes the film.
Divine intervention is a film that depicts the vein in this life under a fascist regime, as Suleiman says.
Critics acclaimed the film and a number of them reckoned that it deserves the palm D’or award at this year Cannes festival -- Albawaba.com
