'Room 514' blows up in the face of Israel's 68 year occupation of the Palestinians on the West Bank. The narrative is straightforward: a female military interrogator interviews two soldiers from an elite division that has abused civilian Palestinians. Anna is young woman finishing her military service; she finds her last assignment a challenge. She has mind of her own, and sees her mission in the IDF as an upholder to its principles of right and wrong. Her commander and feckless lover Ezer tells her to close the case. He sees in a flash that it will do her future no good if she doesn't go with the flow. But her doesn't know her: she has a strong will and a depth to her moral center, and won't give up her interrogation. Room 514 has a setting that is claustrophobic, dense and conceived to break the will of those interrogated. It has a flatness and a greyness that Anna and Ezer's lovemaking cannot bring out bright colors. She slyly has Nimrud give up his commander Davidi. Davidi is brash and acerbic. His language is menacing and her wears his contempt in the same manner he does his stripes of an commander. Anna is unfazed by his bravado and he cracks and confesses. He kills himself leaving a suicide note. It is his apologia pro sua viata for taking his life: his career is based on sheer violence to keep Palestinians whom he regards as less than human in their place. Davidi cracks on the unremmiting pressure to use terror to keep a people under Zionist control as the Israeli elite steals their land through illegal settlement of Jewish colonists. And it is this open secret that makes Bar Ziv's film exceptional and challenging to Israel's myth that Jews are a people occupying a land without people. As the narrative winds to its end, a major general swaggers into Room 514 threatening Anna for exposing a 'Waffen' bridge he created with the sole purpose of keeping the conquered Palestinians in their place through sheer, unwavering violence. Yet Anna is beyond intimidation as she hands him Davidi's suicide note. We can only surmise that his death puts this elite division in the dock. Exit in a huff the general, Anna sits quietly awaiting her fate as the film ends. In a simple setting, Bar Ziv has indicted Israel's occupation. It never occurs that Israeli violence would not give birth or Palestinian resistance or that Palestinians are people alive and of blood and flesh, not animals, not subhumans. Alas, in the US this film wont get much play, now as the sands of geopolitics are shifting away from Israel and Saudi Arab as the US looks to newer partner to maintain a balance of power and its influence. If anything, 'Room 514' is a good example of Israeli cinema at its height!
