Shoshana

"Sometimes you don't know who the spider is and who is the fly."

In the shadows of city streets as well as the human heart, deep and conflicting emotions simmer beneath the surface of Palestine under British authority in the 1930s. Predators become prey for the crime of loving too little, loving too much, or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. A Zionist girl (Shoshana) and British boy (Timothy), equally well-connected, navigate these dark spaces together and apart. Alliances and relationships form and crumble like shifting winds. You think you know someone until their knife is in your back.

Based on real events and people, Shoshana is a thrilling look at how idealism breaks people and nations apart and brings them together. Shot along the seacoast of rural Italy which in certain ways resembles Tel Aviv of the 1930s, Shoshana tells the story of two lovers that parallels the simultaneous dissolution and formation of Israel. The director and main actors were present at the second showing of the film the day after the world premiere. Irina Starshenbaum (Shoshana) said it was hard to stay in great shape when there was such good Italian food available all the time. While I wish the chemistry was better between the actors and that the main theme was clearer, the film highlighted an important truth in relationships between people as well as countries; it matters what sort of thing is being built.

A whistle stop history lesson accompanying the opening credits, teaches us (if you didn't already know) the main touch points of the forming of Israel. Actually I think most people probably don't know do they. If you don't though, please dig deeper than this film. Still, it's dense. Sides forming, violence increasing. It's here that we meet Shoshana (Irina Starshenbaum). She's part of the more liberal open-minded Israel, but a more hard-line politics is growing. Men young and old, Jewish and Arab. All looking to further their cause. It's a three sided battle, to start at least and Shoshana finds herself in the middle. The English are still in charge of the region, which is how we meet young army officers like Geoffrey Morton (Harry Melling) and Shoshana's love interest policeman Thomas (Douglas Booth). It looks good, period detail, believably cast, but it's clunky in its set up. Granted it's a complicated story to nail down in a couple of hours and it certainly doesn't pull any punches, but this is not a good film. Nobody comes out particularly well, least of all the British. This is essentially the story of them buggering up the Balfour Declaration, whilst masking it in the mirrored complexity of Shoshana's love life. She's the soul female voice of reason and common sense again to start at least, in a world of warring men with misguided ideals. It's not a pleasant watch. You've got to ask yourself does this portray the narrative well and accurately. It's difficult to watch it as pure cinema. The real life events hold too much weight. It's effective in bringing the past to life, but it's dramatic retelling was always going not feel lacking. That said the levels of complexity are undoubtably compelling. It's just a shame that this chooses to lean in directions that don't feel anywhere near rounded enough, it's undercooked and with a subject like this, that's pretty unforgivable.

Follows two British policemen, Thomas Wilkin (Douglas Booth) and Geoffrey Morton (Harry Melling), as they hunt down charismatic poet and Zionist independence fighter Avraham Stern (Aury Alby), who was plotting to oust the British authorities. Meanwhile, Thomas falls in love with beautiful Israeli Shoshana (Irina Starshenbaum).

The film features a whirlwind romance, intrigue, betrayal, chases and historic events. Michael Witterbottom (24 Hour Party People) directs this romantic drama with a political thriller background, which tells the story of Shoshana Borochovm, daughter of one of the founders of Socialist Zionism and a British police superintendent named Thomas Wilkin. Giving a detailed description of the Irgun, it was a Zionist paramilitary organization that operated during the British Mandate of Palestine, between 1931 and 1948. It was established as a militant branch of the Haganah ("The Defense"). The Irgun has been considered a terrorist organization. The Irgun was the predecessor of the nationalist political party Herut ("Freedom"), which gave rise to the current Likud party.

Based on historical events when Palestine was a quiet province of the Ottoman Empire, where there was a Jewish community. At the end of the 19th century, the trickle of Jews began due to the diaspora, all of them travelling to Palestine determined to build their country in the Promised Land and under the Balfour Declaration. After the end of the First World War and the conclusion of the Treaty of Versailles, control of Palestine was granted under a Mandate to Great Britain, and the trickle of Israeli immigrants became a flood, and by 1936, at the beginning of the Arab revolt, there were already more than half a million Jews in Palestine. This is the volatile context in which this story moves, which also functions as a portrait of why and how the current conflicts in the Middle East began. And adding specific historical references on screen, such as: On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was founded. The apartment where Avraham Stern lived is now a museum in his honor. Geoffrey Morton successfully brought several libel suits against accusations of having murdered Stern, after Palestine he served in Trinidad and Africa. Shoshana Borochov lived in Tel Aviv until her death at the age of 93 in 2005.

The film was well directed by Michael Winterbottom. His films often deal with social and/or political issues such as Go Now (1995), Welcome to Sarajevo (1997), Wonderland (1999), In This World (2002) or This Shoshana (2023). His films often make references, visual and/or spoken, to the works of Werner Herzog. Due to the improvisational element of much of his work, his films often use hand-held - sometimes digital - photography with crudely edited jumps between scenes and locations, e.g.: Butterfly Kiss (1995), Wonderland (1999), With or Without You (1999), The Claim (2000), 24 Hour Party People (2002), In This World (2002), 9 Songs (2004). He made his directorial debut with two documentaries about Ingmar Bergman. His production of Love Lies Bleeding won the Silver Prize at the 1993 New York Television Festival and the 4-part series 'Family' has collected numerous awards at film and television festivals around the world. He also directed the opening story for the first series of the multi-award-winning Cracker. Winterbottom has made all kinds of genres: drama (Wonderland), period films (Jude), war (Welcome to Sarajevo), western (The Claim), musical comedy (24 Hours Party), documentary fiction (In This World), erotica (9 Songs), even science fiction (Code 46) and film noir (The Killer Inside Me). Shoshana's score: 6.5/10. Good and interesting movie. Worth watching.

Given the lead time for any film, one assumes that this was planned, shot and mostly edited before the recent wave of atrocities (on both sides) broke out in Israel/Gaza/Palestine (choose which name you will). Nevertheless, the timing of its release is poignant.

The film is set in British-controlled Palestine in the thirties and forties as Jewish settlers clash with the indigenous Arabs, sparking off a wave of atrocities and counter-atrocities with the British finding themselves taking increasingly rigorous measures to suppress the violent factions on both sides, to the extent that they pretty much become a third terrorist force.

The Arab point of view fades from the film fairly early on (which is a shame) and the drama centres around two British policemen (Douglas Booth and Harry Melling - who's done some very interesting work since his Harry Potter days) and their attempts to track down and arrest a Jewish terrorist leader played by Aury Alby. Matters are complicated by the fact that one of the officers (Booth) is in a relationship with the titular Shoshana (Irina Starshenbaum) whose sympathies lie with those who wish to create a Jewish state, if not necessarily with those who employ indiscriminate violence to this end.

Things spiral out of the control of all parties as violence begets violence and the body count rises exponentially.

It's difficult to sympathise with either side, nor does the film attempt to do so (one well-known incident is depicted in a deliberately ambiguous manner). Are there any good guys? Maybe there are some well-meaning individuals caught up in events they can neither control nor comprehend, but the viewer is left shaking their head at the barbaric futility of it all. Who's to blame? Everyone who's set foot in the region over the last three thousand years, probably.

It's impossible to watch this film and not think about the events there today. The British may have gone, but the violence still remains - and is only getting worse.

The cast all do a terrific job, and the film's not short of tension. I just wish that a more positive message could be drawn from it.

Giving this an 7/10 rating

Grim true story drama from good old Micheal Winterbottom, so it's rather good and very bloody, this one. Set in the late 1940's in Palestine, The conflict and four characters- Shoshana Borochov, played by Irina Starshenbaum, who is simply brilliant in her very complex role. Douglas Booth as Thomas Wilkin, Harry Melling as Geoffrey Morton and Aury Alby as he very unlikeable Avraham Stern, all are the foils to each other and the tale bounces around these four.

The action is extreme and bloody and very real, bombings assasinations, shootings all over the place, in fact there are so many it's common place, which is the horror and the beauty of it, the life blood of the narrative, but very, very necessary. It can be very cold and also beautiful, as the film looks and acts for the people are surrounded by nothing but death.

This film is right now, very topical so it will give you a sense of the sheer madness of what is going on in that region of the world and any where else for that matter. Expect plenty of death and shocks as Micheal Winterbottom turns it up way up, this is a limited release so the choice is yours, if you can stomach it. It's good, but just how good is going to be up to you, because of the subject matter is just so raw right now, and that it self is the message.