From left, Zuhair Abu Hanna, Samar Qudha Tanus and Saleh Bakri in “The Time That Remains.” Credit Marcel Hartmann/IFC Films is described by its subtitle as the “chronicle of a present absentee,” a paradoxical formulation that reveals a lot about the temperament of its director,. Suleiman, an Arab born in the Israeli city Nazareth in 1960 and currently living in Paris, has an exquisite eye for the conflicts and contradictions that bedevil his native city, but he examines them without polemics or sentimentality. “The Time That Remains” has the scope of a historical epic with none of the expected heaviness. It presents a half-century of tragedy and turmoil as a series of mordant comic vignettes. Imagine a heroic poem boiled down to a flurry of witty epigrams, or a martial statue made of origami, and you will have some idea of the improbable way this filmmaker folds big themes into delicate forms.
Or more to the point, seek out his previous feature, (2002), a semisurrealist anthology of everyday incidents set in. Suleiman, sad eyed and silent, appears in that film as a witness to — and perhaps also a judge of — the ill-matched quirks and foibles of Israelis and Palestinians trying to achieve some kind of normalcy in the face of endless political conflict and a cosmic indifference. In this new film, the director, identified in the credits only as E S, appears early and late, wearing a white scarf that matches the Sontagian streak in his hair, first as a spectral presence in the back seat of a passenger van and then as a prodigal son returned home to collect memories and say goodbye. Most of “The Time That Remains” is the story of Mr. Suleiman’s mother and his father, Fuad, who talks a bit more than his son and smokes a lot more than he talks. We first meet Fuad (Saleh Bakri, who played a handsome Egyptian soldier in ), in 1948, and he is as dashing and charismatic as a Hollywood idol of that era — Gregory Peck, perhaps, or Gary Cooper.
Though his experience of the first Arab-Israeli war is by turns farcical, brutal and heartbreaking, he endures it all with stoical grace. In his son’s affectionate recollection Fuad’s life is a lesson in how dignity and humanity can survive dispossession and defeat. The film itself is evidence that E S (played as a child by Zuhair Abu Hanna and as an adolescent by Ayman Espanioli) has taken his father’s example to heart.
Though there is anger, even bitterness, in his portrayal of the humiliations suffered by at the hands of Israelis, Mr. Suleiman traffics neither in hatred nor in the romanticism of lost causes. Instead he finds comedy in cruelty, and also the reverse.
Violence, betrayal and oppression make their way into Mr. Suleiman’s carefully composed frames, but his tone remains quiet and contemplative throughout. And Nazareth itself seems governed as much by clarity and calm as by chaos and argument. The sunlight on the whitewashed stucco and pale stone walls etches an elegant geometry onto the streets and houses, and the dominant sound is often wind rustling the branches of olive trees. Within this landscape human activity looks both decorous and ridiculous — a cavalcade of carefully executed pratfalls and reversals.
The Time That Remains begins with a cab passenger in dark silhouette, blurred in the backseat. The driver’s doing all the talking.
“You’re not allowed to smoke, but you can if you want,” he says, then, “Where am I?” The driver, an Israeli, feels out of place in a land he doesn’t recognize; his passenger, a Palestinian present absentee, feels even more so. You wouldn’t know by listening to him, though, because the man never speaks. One of the many simple conceits of Elia Suleiman’s film is the way in which one man’s silence becomes a metaphor for an entire nation’s.
The character shares the director’s name, and is played by him, as has been the case in Suleiman’s two previous features, Chronicle of a Disappearance and. Like both of these films, The Time That Remains frequently unfolds in deadpan comedy tableaux, Arabs and Israelis roaring at each other in long shot inside a fixed, unmoving frame. As in both these films, the character of ES acts as a witness, wide eyes processing blankly but still telling us what we need to know. In several key ways, though, The Time That Remains differs from its predecessors. For one thing, unlike those present-day pieces, much of this new film takes place in the past. After the prologue of the director’s return home, we move to 1948, on the day of Nazareth’s surrender during the Arab-Israeli War.
Fuad Suleiman (Saleh Bakri), eventually the director’s father, is a handsome freedom fighter in an absurdist landscape, where a woman cheering soldiers on gets shot dead by one of them. The film shows much of this section in close-up, the most resonant being a shot of Fuad’s blue eyes as he watches a woman ride away. In the film’s next section, set in 1970, he has married that woman, and they are raising a son who teachers keep chastising for calling America imperialist. By day the family sits at the kitchen table, all three members raising teacups simultaneously; by night, Fuad fishes with a friend, a pastime perhaps less innocuous than it seems. Both this section and the subsequent one, set in 1980, feature characters running guns and tearing Israeli flags, but the film opts not to show such potentially sensational scenes (the closest we get is a crazily obscene neighbor, whose lines about Israel’s mother grow tedious quickly).
For the average Palestinian, the film seems to be saying, the goal was to build a fence around oneself to keep the Israeli government from getting in. By the film’s last and strongest section, set in the present day, the frames are firmly in place. An adult Elia comes home after time in exile to find his mother alone and as mute as he is. Rarely have I seen a film gain as much power from scenes in which characters meet who literally have nothing to say to each other, especially when—cheesy as it sounds—fireworks boom outside.
Urgent!” the critic’s notes read. Yet though the film is often too on-the-nose (a paper boy says, “No more The Nation. What’s left is All the Arabs”), it’s hard not to fall for the emotion Suleiman brings to his formal and narrative control. The most powerful shot in the movie comes when the old woman takes an ice cream cone from the refrigerator late at night and sits by herself, licking it; what makes the moment so effective is that a kitchen wall hides her face. A larger point is being made about the way in which Israeli settlement walls have blocked images of Palestinians from the world’s view, but what resonates is the thought of her keeping her pleasure secret.
At moments like these, when the camera serves as a witness, The Time That Remains becomes not just an angry film, but a beautiful one. Donate Slant is reaching more readers than ever before, but advertising revenue across the Internet is falling fast, hitting independently owned and operated publications like ours the hardest. We’ve watched many of our fellow media sites fall by the way side in recent years, but we’re determined to stick around. We’ve never asked our readers for financial support before, and we’re committed to keeping our content free and accessible—meaning no paywalls or subscription fees. If you like what we do, however, please consider becoming a Slant patron. You can also make a one-time donation via PayPal.
Seven years after 'Divine Intervention,' director Elia Suleiman returns with more humorous-sad stories from his native Palestine, couched in the ironic autobiographical language at which he is grandly adept. 'The Time That Remains' and its subtitle, 'Chronicle of a Present Absentee,' suggest that there is little to hope for in the current political situation, where Suleiman's own role is that of a passive observer. Despite its serious subject, this gentle, bittersweet film is an easy watch and should penetrate arthouse markets at least as well as its predecessor. Examining his own uncomfortable status as an Israeli Arab through the memories of his family in Nazareth, Suleiman traces his family's history from 1948, the year Israel declared its independence.
The fighting between various Arab armies and the Israelis is seen first as farce, then as drama when his father, Fuad Suleiman (played with silent intensity by the handsome Saleh Bakri), a resistance fighter, is almost killed by the new Israeli army. Poorly armed with homemade weapons, the resistance movement is doomed. Fuad survives, however, and has a son, Elia (Zuhair Abu Hanna), who is constantly in trouble at his Israeli school for his political views. Maxell create it cd label template.
This is succinctly conveyed in a pair of face-offs between the boy and his teacher. Dialogue is kept to a minimum and visuals take the lead in conveying the awkwardness of his family's life as Arabs living in Israel, without nationality, under a military administration. Yet life goes on in its ordinary absurdity. Elia's deadpan family keeps their thoughts to themselves, though their crazy alcoholic neighbor (Tarek Qubti) doesn't mince words when talking about politics. His is virtually the only open protest against Israel in a film imbued with a fine sense of irony and much more regretfulness than anger. Time passes and Elia becomes a wide-eyed teenager (Ayman Espanioli).
More time passes, and he becomes Elia Suleiman in person. He has returned to Nazareth to visit his aged mother, who is lost in her own world. The Israeli police are unbelievably nice and cooperative - one even brings over homemade tabouleh, washes the dishes and cleans the house. Meanwhile, in Ramallah, a huge army tank menacingly points its gun at an Arab man who totally ignores the threat, the way kids dancing in a discotheque ignore curfew. Despite the long list of co-producers, the film was clearly made on a budget, a fact that gives it a more intimate and personal look than an epic dimension. Violence is kept off-screen and there are no action scenes per se. The retro charm of old Nazareth is captured by Marc-Andre Batigne's cinematography and deceptively naive camera movement, barely more than in a silent movie.
Soundtrack is a funny selection of songs that range from 'Jingle Bells' to a disco remix of 'Staying Alive,' each with a point to make, and a heady excerpt of 'Spartacus' is thrown in as a freebie. Section: In competition Production company: The Film, Nazira Films, France 3 Cinema, Artemis Productions, RTBF, Belgacom, BIM Distribuzione, Corniche Pictures. Cast: Elia Suleiman, Saleh Bakri, Samar Qudha Tanus, Shafika Bajjali, Tarek Qubti, Zuhair Abu Hanna, Ayman Espanioli, Bilal Zidani, Leila Muammar, Yasmine Haj. Director: Elia Suleiman Screenwriter: Elia Suleiman Executive producers:Hani Farsi Producers: Michael Gentile, Elia Suleiman Director of photography: Marc-Andre Batigne Production designer: Sharif Waked Music consultant: Yasmine Hamdan Costumes: Judy Shrewsbury Editor: Veronique Lange Sales Agent: Wild Bunch, Paris 112 minutes.
The Time That Remains begins with a cab passenger in dark silhouette, blurred in the backseat. The driver’s doing all the talking. “You’re not allowed to smoke, but you can if you want,” he says, then, “Where am I?” The driver, an Israeli, feels out of place in a land he doesn’t recognize; his passenger, a Palestinian present absentee, feels even more so. You wouldn’t know by listening to him, though, because the man never speaks. One of the many simple conceits of Elia Suleiman’s film is the way in which one man’s silence becomes a metaphor for an entire nation’s. The character shares the director’s name, and is played by him, as has been the case in Suleiman’s two previous features, Chronicle of a Disappearance and. Like both of these films, The Time That Remains frequently unfolds in deadpan comedy tableaux, Arabs and Israelis roaring at each other in long shot inside a fixed, unmoving frame.
As in both these films, the character of ES acts as a witness, wide eyes processing blankly but still telling us what we need to know. In several key ways, though, The Time That Remains differs from its predecessors. For one thing, unlike those present-day pieces, much of this new film takes place in the past. After the prologue of the director’s return home, we move to 1948, on the day of Nazareth’s surrender during the Arab-Israeli War.
Fuad Suleiman (Saleh Bakri), eventually the director’s father, is a handsome freedom fighter in an absurdist landscape, where a woman cheering soldiers on gets shot dead by one of them. The film shows much of this section in close-up, the most resonant being a shot of Fuad’s blue eyes as he watches a woman ride away.
In the film’s next section, set in 1970, he has married that woman, and they are raising a son who teachers keep chastising for calling America imperialist. By day the family sits at the kitchen table, all three members raising teacups simultaneously; by night, Fuad fishes with a friend, a pastime perhaps less innocuous than it seems. Both this section and the subsequent one, set in 1980, feature characters running guns and tearing Israeli flags, but the film opts not to show such potentially sensational scenes (the closest we get is a crazily obscene neighbor, whose lines about Israel’s mother grow tedious quickly).
For the average Palestinian, the film seems to be saying, the goal was to build a fence around oneself to keep the Israeli government from getting in. By the film’s last and strongest section, set in the present day, the frames are firmly in place. An adult Elia comes home after time in exile to find his mother alone and as mute as he is. Rarely have I seen a film gain as much power from scenes in which characters meet who literally have nothing to say to each other, especially when—cheesy as it sounds—fireworks boom outside.
Urgent!” the critic’s notes read. Yet though the film is often too on-the-nose (a paper boy says, “No more The Nation.
What’s left is All the Arabs”), it’s hard not to fall for the emotion Suleiman brings to his formal and narrative control. The most powerful shot in the movie comes when the old woman takes an ice cream cone from the refrigerator late at night and sits by herself, licking it; what makes the moment so effective is that a kitchen wall hides her face. A larger point is being made about the way in which Israeli settlement walls have blocked images of Palestinians from the world’s view, but what resonates is the thought of her keeping her pleasure secret. At moments like these, when the camera serves as a witness, The Time That Remains becomes not just an angry film, but a beautiful one. Donate Slant is reaching more readers than ever before, but advertising revenue across the Internet is falling fast, hitting independently owned and operated publications like ours the hardest. We’ve watched many of our fellow media sites fall by the way side in recent years, but we’re determined to stick around. We’ve never asked our readers for financial support before, and we’re committed to keeping our content free and accessible—meaning no paywalls or subscription fees.
The Time That Remains Summary
If you like what we do, however, please consider becoming a Slant patron. You can also make a one-time donation via PayPal.
Comments are closed.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |