In Bethlehem, Israeli director Yuval Adler's diagnoses the Israeli-Palestian stand-off as a hopeless excess of testosterone. The largely male cast is in constant action, pacing, plotting, strutting, risking, as if they're addicted to a pumped-up adrenalin. Mainly strutting. Two rivals meet, tease, then race up a building's stairs. From the top the winner throws his rival to his death. Boys will be boys.
The opening and closing scenes set up the coming of age of the 17-year-old Palestinian Sanfur. His name comes from the Smurfs but no softness or play is allowed him. In the first scene he accepts his friends' dare to take a kalyshnikoff shot to an armoured vest. He's wounded. In the last shot he sits in tears beside the Israeli Secret Service agent Razi, whom he has just killed, first shooting him, then bashing in his skull. The latter detail makes the kill more direct, more emotional. In his subsequent remorse and grief Razi's last trace of Smurf emerges. This coming of age is a Bar Mitzvah on steroids.
Sanfur's older brother Ibrahim is a prominent terrorist/freedom fighter, supported by both Hamas and Al Aqsa. The two anti-Israel armies almost come to blows in their own stand-off, over who will provide Ibrahim's last honours.
Further fracturing the movement, the Arab groups disdain of the Bedouins, which only fires the ambition of another killer, Badawi. Badawi coerces Sanfur into killing Razi to atone for his collaboration. The adrenalin drives the Arab men into constant fights among themselves as well as against Israel. And as the Israeli intelligence seeks troubled Arabs to play, to make collaborators, the Arab is put to war within himself as well. So, too, the Israeli. Razi saves Sanfur from the plot to kill Ibrahim, for the given reason that he's too important a source to lose, but also because he has developed genuine feelings for the "buddy" he has counselled and supported — and exploited — for several years.
Razi bullheadedly rushes to his fatal meeting despite his wife's warning and the female commander's order that he not go. Characters living on their pumped adrenalin keep the cycle of killing and retribution going. War breeds war but peace does not breed peace. There's no blood in it. For more see www.yacowar.blogspot.com.
The opening and closing scenes set up the coming of age of the 17-year-old Palestinian Sanfur. His name comes from the Smurfs but no softness or play is allowed him. In the first scene he accepts his friends' dare to take a kalyshnikoff shot to an armoured vest. He's wounded. In the last shot he sits in tears beside the Israeli Secret Service agent Razi, whom he has just killed, first shooting him, then bashing in his skull. The latter detail makes the kill more direct, more emotional. In his subsequent remorse and grief Razi's last trace of Smurf emerges. This coming of age is a Bar Mitzvah on steroids.
Sanfur's older brother Ibrahim is a prominent terrorist/freedom fighter, supported by both Hamas and Al Aqsa. The two anti-Israel armies almost come to blows in their own stand-off, over who will provide Ibrahim's last honours.
Further fracturing the movement, the Arab groups disdain of the Bedouins, which only fires the ambition of another killer, Badawi. Badawi coerces Sanfur into killing Razi to atone for his collaboration. The adrenalin drives the Arab men into constant fights among themselves as well as against Israel. And as the Israeli intelligence seeks troubled Arabs to play, to make collaborators, the Arab is put to war within himself as well. So, too, the Israeli. Razi saves Sanfur from the plot to kill Ibrahim, for the given reason that he's too important a source to lose, but also because he has developed genuine feelings for the "buddy" he has counselled and supported — and exploited — for several years.
Razi bullheadedly rushes to his fatal meeting despite his wife's warning and the female commander's order that he not go. Characters living on their pumped adrenalin keep the cycle of killing and retribution going. War breeds war but peace does not breed peace. There's no blood in it. For more see www.yacowar.blogspot.com.