Welcome to the Occupation

摘要

In palestinial filmmaker ella Suleiman's "Divine Intervention," a sexy Arab girl saunters through a military checkpoint like a supermodel down a catwalk, a sweating Santa is chased by knife-wielding kids and an apricot pit tossed carelessly out a car window blows an Israeli tank to smithereens. These bizarre, disturbing comic fantasies pepper the otherwise quietly oppressive life of E.S. (played by Suleiman himself), a Euro-suave Palestinian who lives an excruciating checkpoint away from his love in Ramallah, and way too close to his ailing father in Nazareth. This is one of the few feature films―let alone black comedies―to arise out of Arab Israel, and it goes where nightly news clips can't. It maneuvers through occupation and war (i.e., everyday life) with a cinematographer's eye, a satirist's wit and a secular Palestinian's skepticism, blurring the lines dividing pointed political drama, art-house abstraction and over-the-top sketch comedy.