“Peace hath higher tests of manhood than battle ever knew.” - John Greenleaf Whittier
For Movie Monday today, a film we watched some months ago and which has stayed in my mind and is quite apt given the events in the Gaza Strip. It is the 1987 “Wedding in Galilee”, written and directed by Michel Khleifi. It is an Israeli/Palestinian/French/Belgian co-production and is a film that is complex and rich, even though quite episodic and of almost documentary, anthropological interest.
The film as the title suggests is about a wedding in Galilee (which immediately brings to mind the biblical wedding at Cana). A Palestinian asks the Israeli administration permission so as to have the curfew waived such that he is able to give his son a fine wedding. The military governor agrees, on the condition that he and his officers attend the wedding. The father of the groom accepts, but the groom berates his father for agreeing to this condition.
Much of the film is taken up with the traditions surrounding a Palestinian wedding with the women ritually preparing the bride; men preparing the groom. The guests begin to arrive and to gather, giving opportunity to Palestinian youths to plot violence against the Israelis. A female Israeli officer swoons in the heat and the Palestinian women take her into the cool house to recover. A valuable horse gets loose and runs into a minefield. Israeli soldiers and Palestinians must cooperate if they are to rescue it. Darkness falls and tensions between the army and the villagers become more acute. The film is hampered in this part by the very dark exposure and bewildering action that confuses and befuddles the viewer. Although this may be symbolic, there is no question about he symbolism of the groom’s wedding-night anger and impotence, which threaten family dignity and honour. Will the situation implode in on itself with massively destructive results or will the two conflicting sides reach some sort of amicable understanding?
As I mentioned before this is an interesting film, examining traditional village customs and a study of the tensions inherent in the Israeli/Palestinian coexistence in a land they both claim as their own through centuries of occupation. The exploration of ethnic, generational, political and gender divides was patchy, but an astute viewer will read between the lines and perhaps this is what the director is aiming at. The portrayal of Palestinian men as proud but powerless, ashamed and angry epitomizes the situation we see even today in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian father is powerless to keep the Israelis away from his son’s wedding, but once they are his guests, relieved that there is incompetency in planning and carrying out an attack against them. The code of hospitality and the code of honour clash but the highly symbolic horse episode brings to the fore the need for cooperation in order to achieve a commonly acceptable and beneficial goal.
Palestinian women are portrayed as more sensitive, sensual, peaceful and more willing to work together with the “enemy”. There was a none too subtle eroticism portrayed in the interactions between the women, but this may be my very simplistic reading of it. One could argue that these erotic overtones simply demonstrated the regard the women have for one another and the sisterly love that they feel for one another.
This was not a great movie by any means – it had too many “cinematic double faults” in it - however, it was a movie that was fascinating to watch and extremely thought-provoking. It tackled some core issues of the Middle East and showed that reconciliation is the only way that survival of all can be assured.
No comments:
Post a Comment