The Time that Remains

A dark room at the Al Hussein Cultural Center in Amman, Jordan. Two young women late to a screening. Some whispering. We finally find two well-located seats. The movie? The Time that Remains.
The director? Elia Suleiman, a talented Christian Arab-Israeli. One hour forty-five minutes (minus fifteen minutes!) of absurdity begin. In Arabic, of course!

The movie deals with Elia Suleiman's observation of the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 through the present day. It is inspired by his father's private diaries and his mother's letters to their family in Jordan.
Suleiman provides a down-to-earth account of the lives of those who decided to stay in the newly-established state and live as a minorty.

In the Arab village of Nazareth, in what is today Israel, Suleiman's family witnesses the absurdity of military occupation. The film is slow and powerful, such as the daily life of these Palestinians. Thanks to the director's sober cinematic style, we undertand that all is about observation. We observe the characters staring at life going on. Suleiman and his friends watch events that they cannot control or influence. A burlesque moment of the movie perfectly captures this absurdity: for about five minutes, an Israeli tank is targeting every movement of a random Palestinian man, who is talking on the phone, in the street, during the day. It obviously underlines Israelis worried about threats that could come from, according to them, any Palestinian in the most common situations. There is not any music. Just the strident sound of the war machine.

Throughout the movie, we observe beauty, when, on a balcony, Suleiman is looking at his mother who is staring at beautiful fireworks. We observe pain in the eyes of a seven-year old boy who cries when he hears on television the death of Nasser in Egypt, the proponent of Arab nationalism, who might have been a hope for the Palestinian people. We observe despair, in the gestures of a silent family. When nothing is left, the time that remains is devoted to the observation of hopelessness.

The Time that Remains also highlights Suleiman's deepest desire. In another sequence of the movie, we see him staring at the Wall, which divides the West Bank from Israel. All of a sudden, he vaults over the Wall with a long pole. Irrealistic? Maybe not. In a five-second sequence, the director puts an end to division, insecurity and hatred. This is an open path to reconciliation.

The music of the film also underlines Palestinians' hardship under occupation. We go from house music in a club, where Palestinians are dancing at night, to the sounds of Israeli soldiers yelling at them with a microphone. In the most normal situations, Arab-Israelis are brought to the reality of the conflict.

This sober movie is very compelling. Suleiman forcelly features Palestinians' meaningless life. He masters the combination of tragedy and comedy in this dark comedy. More dark than funny though.

Suleiman also explains that, in the Israeli-Arab conflict, all is about interpretation, in the same way Samuel Maoz's movie Lebanon proves it. Maoz's film brings the audience into the nightmare of four Israelis in a tank, during the first Lebanon war, in June 1982. It emphasizes young soldiers' doubts and fears in the chaos of war. We becomes more familiar with– perhaps more sensitive to, Israelis' perspectives.

Indeed, all is about the lenses through which we observe conflicts.