The Time That Remains

The Time That Remains is a cinematic marvel about war, family and love. Elia Suleiman with his brilliant comic timing accompanied with visually arresting portraits of Israel and yesteryear's Holyland, exposes his personality for the screen. An art house film with all the fixings especially history, cultural entanglement and humanity during a time of great duress. The story depicts a land that has passed us by but memories remain in dialogue, tradition and repetition. A true masterpiece. X Compares to the scope and depth and landscape of great cinema like Roma, the humor of Dr. Strangelove and the ingenious of the Coen Brothers.

A quick history of Absurdistan, the country now known as Israel or Palestine (depending on which part of the wall you end up on). A personalised account starting from the Jewish take over of Palestine in 1948 and leading up to current day Israel. The movie however is less about the big picture, Palestinian-Israeli relations, but more about the very personal story of Elia Suleiman, his father - a resistance fighter - and mother.

The backdrop of history is used with great consequence, as Suleiman drives his tale through varying levels of absurdity and yet manages to deliver an emotionally gripping tale. Scenes of profound sadness, like the death of Elia's father, are preceded by short, but realistic, sketches of the ludicrous and nonsensical, like a tank following a man taking out the trash. However Suleiman delivers it with such class, that he never once dances with being a pastiche and remains a poignant, artistic picture throughout. Instead of making a dramatised account full of grief and sadness, Suleiman does the unthinkable with a devastating effect: laughs it all out.

Elia Suleiman is increasingly proving himself to be not only the most important Palestinian director, but also the best Israeli one as well. Talk about being absurd...

This film has a very distinguished style and sense of humor for such a dark topic on the conflict of Israel and Palestine. It reflects three generations of the conflict through the perspective of Es (the protagonist) who plays a child, a teenager and an elder man. He never speaks perhaps as a metaphor representing the voiceless. One thing I was also able to appreciate as an Egyptian audience, the Egyptian songs by Laila Mourad and Mohamed Abdel Wahab, as well as some Egyptian news references, like on the death of Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1970. Something that a Western audience may not at all experience in the same way a Middle Eastern or Arabic Audience would, is almost like a cheery on the icing for people of that culture, a little gift made exclusively for us, that only we can feel nostalgic about and understand the reference to that culture and era. This film portrays the issue as a gray issue and does no only show the oppressive and inhuman acts of the Israeli Militants, like when they throw Es' father off a cliff. A few scenes show a very human side to them as well, like in the scene when they call out to stop a dance party because of curfew, the first idea that came to mind was the cultural deprivation, but when the military figures start dancing to the music track, it highlights that both sides unite by liking the same music. In another scene, when Israeli military move furniture items onto a truck, the listen to music and smoke cigarettes, somehow very subtly reveals them as ordinary military base figures on duty, it does not look so different from Egyptian bases. He also does not glorify all Palestinians as victims. We get to see a Palestinian who joins the Israeli military and is perceived as a traitor, and called out on it, but he explains later how he needs the work to feed his family. Another very interesting portrayal of how a land under an occupation becomes so natural and part of the backdrop and landscape of the environment, like in the scene when a guy on the cell phone who walks back and forth is pointed at with a tank tracking his every move. The guy does not react at all. This film had a very promising subtle message that the issue is gray and complicated and it seems to be a wish to focus on the good sides in both sides and bringing people together.

The Time That Remains starts in 1948 in Palestine with the invasion by the Israeli armed forces. This event casts a long shadow over the entire movie. It's a Palestinian account, occasionally a very personal account, of how life has continued since then. The movie is contending that in cultural terms there's been a huge degradation, and people have lived in stasis, their lives not moving forward at all.

The movie is a farce which reminds me of the Georgian cinematic tradition of military/political farces such as Brigands Chapter VII from Otar Iosseliani and Repentance from Tenghiz Abuladze. It's very funny at times, and very deadpan, but at others it's very poignant. For example there is literally a tug'o'war in a hospital corridor (shot from outside the building - a neutral absurd position typical of this film) between policemen and doctors concerning a wounded man on a gurney, who presumably is wanted for "questioning".

It's an autobiographical film which is shot on a human level and is therefore a lot more palatable than other politically motivated movies on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It's a film that takes place over many years, culminating in the present day. Over the period there's a decline in health of the characters shown, and also in the cultural health, the young consume only American pop and films, gangsterism and culturally tolerated theft is commonplace. The movie could have been a lot stronger for sure on this point, Israeli forces have destroyed the Palestinian infrastructure. Given that it's a Palestinian point of view, I think it's remarkably even handed.

Suleiman views the occupation as implacable, his neighbour (who is mentally broken by the occupation) one day converses with Suleiman's father and says that he's discovered the secret to fight the occupation, the answer is the (un-Muslim) option of drinking arak, once drunk on arak, the Israeli planes are close enough to be plucked out of the air. That's the level of impotence that I think the characters in the film feel about events.

I think there's a sense of shame as well. I remember when Cheney's forces invaded Iraq, the speed with which they overcame the nation was viewed as a great shame for Arabs across the entire Middle East. The capitulation of Palestine is depicted the same way here, total and almost immediate, with the Mayor of Nazareth signing over the city to the Israelis without a word of protest. All we really see of Palestinian soldiers is a bunch of them jettisoning their keffiyehs and weapons and running for dear life before an engagement has even started. One man marches into an Israeli post and shoots himself as an act of defiance and protest, but this is portrayed with nil gravitas by Suleiman, as pointless as shouting at the wind.

The film is really a treasure trove of absurd vignettes that I don't want to delve into too deeply and spoil the movie for you, but I've got a list of at least ten other highly memorable moments in this film.

For you all you Americans out there, the movie is quite hostile towards American foreign policy. You won't see an American in the movie though. I don't think it's that controversial, it's pretty clear that the only real special relationship the US has had over the last half a century, in foreign policy terms, has been with Israel, and that's been to the detriment of the Palestinians.

I think the movie is a masterpiece of cogent dissent.

Sometimes, life throws at us things that over the years become too big to comprehend. Such are natural disasters, pandemic diseases, nuclear explosions, and wars.

In his movie, released in 2009, Elia Suleiman sets on a journey to explore the genre of black comedy, so as to reveal to us the secret of coping with a tragedy of which the magnitude is overwhelming.

It is the nature of human mind to always look for some form of normality, maybe a little static, but nevertheless, a feeling that your bases are covered, your life has a purpose and your entire existence in a certain place and at a certain time is not meaningless. This is what we, humans, do when gun battles, tanks and security surges are suddenly a persistent part of the daily routine. And this is exactly the focus of The Time That Remains. Half a century of tragedy is squeezed into an hour and a half of a laconic and precisely targeted shock therapy.

Despite its smoothness and an accurately placed hint of suspense, this movie doesn't truly give you a moment of rest. There's no wallowing in self-pity here, no destructive mind blowing imagery; even the garden of executions is so well carved into the texture of the surrounding neighborhood that it appears natural despite your mind telling you that what you are looking at is a yelling contradiction to what is humanly acceptable.

There's also no conflict, in a traditional sense of the word, around which the story would evolve. All there is is a deceptively distanced and only seemingly uninvolved bitterly comic narration about generations of painful struggle to remain human in a filled with nonsense reality, where even a direct participant finds himself merely an observer, trying to just be.

The movie strikes as grotesque, largely satirical, very reflective and detailed. This effect doesn't wear off till the very last scene.

When telling the truth becomes a taboo, the sensationalism of this movie is found in the peculiar way of drawing attention to what should not be discussed, because the subject makes us uncomfortable.

Elia Suleiman resorts to various means offered by cinematography in order to break the unbreakable, to jump over the wall.

There are no loud graphic scenes in this movie, nothing at all that an adult cannot handle; yet, it is heavily loaded with incredible emotions that run deep in the film's canvas, leaving you gulp for air at times.

When deciding whether or not to watch this movie, don't hesitate. Just watch. And prepare lots of tissues, even if you are known for having a thick skin.