Divine Intervention
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Ahmad Ayadi, Amer Daher, Daher Daher, Samih Bathish, Ziad DanielBrand: Koch International
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Arabic (Original Language); English (Original Language); Hebrew (Original Language)
Format: Color, Content/Copy-Protected CD, Dolby, DVD, Enhanced, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 92 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-07-12
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Koch Lorber Films
Product features:
- DIVINE INTERVENTION writer-director Elia Suleiman has been compared to Woody Allen and Charlie Chaplin, presumably because he has Allen's intelligent, self-deprecating humor and Chaplin's gift for silent comedy. DIVINE INTERVENTION is not a silent film, but an intensely quiet comedy about daily life in the West Bank and Israel. Suleiman provides a series of not-altogether-related vignettes
Movie Reviews of Divine Intervention
Movie Review: Hate Thy Neighbor
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of those movies that manages to be both immediately accessible as well as rewarding in new ways when seen multiple times. Despite its Palestinian locations and the setting of two-thirds of the movie around Israeli checkpoints, its crowning paradox is that it is, in the words of writer-director Elia Suleiman, "not socio-politically specific." Its comedic sense provokes the laughter of recognition and empathy: the sense of feeling boxed in with those whom we cannot stand will be familiar to all but the most saintly viewers. The film holds a mirror up to us, and when we laugh, it is because we look pretty damn silly.
Some moments: a man drives through Nazareth, waving at pedestrians and motorists, cursing each one more elaborately than the last through a clenched smile; a teenager in a soccer jersey accidentally bounces a ball onto a roof--as if just waiting for such an event, the homeowner emerges with a knife and stabs the ball flat before returning it to the boy; some Israeli police are approached by a tourist for directions to the Old City, and when they are unable to help her, a blindfolded Palestinian in their custody is told to direct her--with the blindfold still on, of course; a perspective of a hospital corridor gives an intricately-choreographed view of everyone from medical staff to cardiac patients smoking cigarettes and pacing, some of them with drip bags in tow; a man whose father has just died chops onions and weeps.
The opening 30 minutes all take place in static shots that are placed no more than about twenty meters from each other. Each shot comments on the one before it--as we look out over the terraced cityscape, there is a sense that no matter how elevated one's perspective, there is always an unseen someone watching you with the same bemused malice with which you view your neighbor. There are the kind of coup de l'oeil effects that one associates with Jacques Tati: a low angle view of several men with sticks and a gun appears to show a brutal murder, but the payoff reveals their actions to be quite innocuous.
This is also a good movie for the subtitle-phobic, inasmuch as it contains very little dialogue. It also does not have an original score, relying very sparingly on pre-existing music. Yet, its brilliance extends to the sound mix, where everything from birdsong to car alarms acts, in turns, as counterpoint or as emphasis to the action.
DIVINE INTERVENTION is not only for lovers of Keaton, Lewis and Tati, but also for devotees of Lumiere, Renoir, Bresson, Ozu, Donen and Hou Hsiao Hsien. It is a generous film that keeps giving with each repeated viewing.
Summary of Divine Intervention
At the center of the Middle East conflict, hearts beat in tragic comedy and deadpan irony: a sexy young Palestinian woman defies Israeli soldiers and struts through a check-point as if it were the catwalk of a fashion show, Santa Claus is chased up the sun-drenched hills of Nazareth by a gang of knife-wielding school kids, Israeli police use a blindfolded prisoner to provide directions to tourists in Jerusalem, a Palestinian collaborator casually extinguishes his firebombed house on a daily basis, and a female ninja descends from the sky, holding the map of ?Palestine? as her battle shield. These are but a few of the provocative images that filmmaker Elia Suleiman puts forth in his critically-acclaimed satire chronicling the absurdities of life and love on both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli border, DIVINE INTERVENTION.Similar DVD Movies
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