Private (2004)

A Palestinian family is trapped inside a house commandeered by Israeli soldiers.

Director:

Saverio Costanzo

Writers:

Saverio Costanzo, Sayed Kashua

Stars:

Mohammad Bakri, Lior Miller, Hend Ayoub

11 wins & 7 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview:
Mohammad Bakri	...	Mohammad B. (as Mohammed Bakri)
Lior Miller	...	Commander Ofer
Hend Ayoub	...	Mariam B.
Tomer Russo	...	Private Eial
Areen Omari	...	Samiah B.
Marco Alsaying	...	Jamal B.
Sara Hamzeh	...	Sarah B.
Karem Emad Hassan Aly	...	Karem B.
Amir Hasayen	...	Amir B.
Niv Shafir	...	Private Dan
Sahar Lachmy	...	Private Ariel

Storyline

A Palestinian family with five children lives outside town, near Israeli settlements. Samia, the wife, wants to leave; so does one teen son. Mohammad, the patriarch, is adamant that he is staying. Two of his adolescent children want to fight. His is the passive aggression of non-violent witness. Israeli soldiers burst into the home, taking over the second floor. At night, the family is locked in the living room. We see the effects of the occupation on the children and on the marriage. Through the eyes of Miriam, the older daughter, we watch the soldiers from her hiding place. Jamal, the eldest son, sets a trap with a grenade. Characters call upon Allah. Chaos and death are close.

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Plot Keywords:

israeli | soldier | israeli soldier | palestine | palestinian | 

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Genres:

Drama | War

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Details

Official Sites:

Distributor site Official site

Country:

Italy

Language:

Arabic English Hebrew

Release Date:

14 January 2005 (Italy)

Also Known As:

Domicilio privado

Filming Locations:

Riace, Reggio Calabria, Calabria, Italy

Box Office

Opening Weekend:

€64,831 (Italy), 16 January 2005, Limited Release

Opening Weekend USA:

$2,903, 2 December 2005

Gross USA:

$9,623, 4 December 2005

Company Credits

Production Co:

Istituto Luce,Offside,Cydonia

Technical Specs

Runtime:

90 min 125 min (original)

Sound Mix:

Dolby SR

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The movie was chosen by Italy to represent the nation for the Accademy Award best foreign movie. The Accademy refused the movie because was not performed in Italian.

User Reviews

An Overly Mannered Effort to Humanize the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict

The first half of "Private" is frustrating as a set piece of European intellectualism and inauthenticity strained to establish a logic puzzle mind game, but the second half rises to the level of universal humanity.

There have been many movies about the stubborn old idealist who infuriates his family with his implacability ("Man of La Mancha," "The Field," "Straight Story," etc.) but co-writer/debut director Saverio Costanzo sets this one as a barely-believable Shakespeare-quoting, educated, middle class, secular Palestinian holding on to his house and his very large family amidst the volatility of the West Bank territories.

Each member of the family represents a type that has some similarity to the family in "Raisin in the Sun" -- the exhausted housewife who just wants her kids to be safe, the beautiful eldest, enscarfed daughter who argues against leaving for a European education to the apathetic sports-mad teen boy radicalized by his conflicts with Israelis to the traumatized little girl and the big-eyed curious, adorable little brother.

With much of the film shot in dark as shaky, pseudo-documentary digital video like night vision goggles, the forced comparison to "Diary of Anne Frank" doesn't quite hold up as the family is locked into their living room only at night by occupying Israeli soldiers as it is a principle not survival itself that the father is insisting upon. They seem to have complete daily freedom to shop and go to school (they say "madrassa" on the soundtrack but we see them do math homework not rotely memorize The Koran), but not to host friends.

While the film does well build up the tension of this nightly, stressful ritual, that is also true in nonpolitical hostage films from "Petrified Forest," to "Key Largo," "Desperate Hours," and on and on. The Israeli soldiers are as much types as the soldiers in the TV series "Over There." There's the barking sergeant, the sensitive intellectual and the bored joker just doing his job, but with the casual mention that these frustrated reservists are commuting distance from home, as was seen in "Kippur." The film is also unfair in only hinting at what attacks they, let alone their families at their home towns, have endured from Palestinian civilians to make them so aggressive and jumpy.

While it is ironic that the Palestinians and the Israelis have to speak broken English to each other to communicate, the larger themes are confused in perception to the audience because it is not clear what the participants do and do not understand as most of the conversations are translated for us in the subtitles. This is important because the second half of the film reaches an intriguing point where each side slowly starts to perceive each other as individuals and not as just "the other."

The turning point is when the oldest daughter breaks the rules restricting the family downstairs and spies on the soldiers billeted upstairs. Motivated initially by some kind of revenge fantasy, she is gradually overcome by natural curiosity, and perhaps voyeurism as they are hunky young men, and begins to parse out their relationships from their body language and activities, which she later relates fantastically to her equally curious younger brother. Shot only from her viewpoint, we begin to realize that a narrow sliver is really how each side has been seeing the other all along.

The film leaves no doubt that such insights are brief blips in the ongoing struggles between both sides that leave tragedy in the wake of the continued cycle of miscommunications and misperceptions.

Oddly, this is the second recent Italian film about terrorism (Good Morning, Night (Buongiorno, notte)) that uses a Pink Floyd-related song too heavy-handedly on the soundtrack (here a cover of "Perfect Sense, Part 1" from Roger Waters's Amused to Death).