“Divine Intervention’s” impact extends far beyond Israel’s disputed borders. It beat out “8 Mile” and “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” at the European Film Awards in the best non-European picture category and won big at the Cannes Film Festival. Though it won’t be released in the United States until next month, it’s already sparked great interest–and controversy. Some pro-Israeli groups want to have the film banned, and it’s not eligible for a best- foreign-film Oscar because the motion- picture Academy does not recognize Palestine as a nation. Meanwhile its U.S. distributor, Avatar, decided to hold the film’s release until 2003 so it would have time to protest the rules.
Suleiman, 42, is used to opposition by now. His first feature film, “Chronicle of a Disappearance,” was booed at the Tunis film festival; its closing image showed the raising of an Israeli flag. “I was accused of being a collaborator, a Zionist, the usual nonsense,” says Suleiman from his home in Paris. “Chronicle” was shunned by Arab critics; in Israel, it topped best-of lists. Now, Suleiman says, no Israeli exhibitor wants to show “Divine Intervention.” He laughs. “That’s the irony I always live under.”
And irony is this film’s lifeblood. Like the French filmmaker Jacques Tati, whom he acknowledges as an inspiration, Suleiman takes a wry look at the middle class; the father’s neighbors bicker over parking spots and dump trash into one another’s yards. But it’s the incongruous vignettes about life as a second-class citizen that snap this film awake. When a female tourist asks an Israeli cop for directions, he pulls a blindfolded, handcuffed Palestinian out of his van and the prisoner casually maps out the best way to the old city. Harsh? Yes. And hysterical. In another scene, E.S. releases a red balloon imprinted with a picture of Arafat above heavily armed soldiers (played by Israeli actors who actually served on the force). “There’s a balloon trying to get through,” one guard radios. “Can we take it down?”
The real-life Israeli police didn’t see the humor. “During a Molotov-cocktail scene in East Jerusalem, they said no way, nothing that makes noise,” he says. “I did it the last day of the shooting. It was a hit-and-run operation.” Because of recent violence between Jews and Arabs, “Divine Intervention” took three years to make. “Every time we’d go to shoot someplace, there’d be other people shooting,” says Suleiman. “I asked people on the set not to be attuned to the exterior world. Otherwise, what we were doing wouldn’t be funny.”
The prevailing anger and despair still boil over in devastating scenes: in one, a drunken checkpoint guard humiliates Arabs by making them switch vehicles, as if playing musical chairs, while singing nationalistic Israeli songs. But the clmost incendiary moment is a crisp parody of “The Matrix.” A cardboard Palestinian decoy from an Israeli firing range comes magically to life in the form of E.S.’s kaffiyeh-wearing girlfriend. She fights the marksmen “Crouching Tiger” style, performing supernatural physical feats and stopping bullets in midair. The Palestin-ian twist? She confounds her enemies West Bank style–with rocks. In Suleiman’s world, the slingshot prevails over the machine gun, and high-flying art over earthbound political commentary.
