My thoughts about movies and TV shows I've been watching

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Sunday, July 27, 2014

Palestinian-Israeli conflict - a powerful film about this crisis

Not sure of the provenance of the recent film Omar - certainly suspect it's from a Palestinian cast and crew, though very often the low-budget, intelligent "foreign" films such as this one are co-produced - but in any case it's a very thoughtful and well-constructed dramatic look at the Israel-Palestinian conflict through the POV of a single young Palestinian man committed to his revolutionary ideals but torn as he begins to suspect some of his co-activists of complicity and double-dealing. The eponymous Omar takes part in an ambush attach on some Israeli soldiers; the youngest of the trio in the ambush, as a kind of initiation, takes the first sniper shot and kills an Israeli soldier. Subsequently, Omar gets arrested and tortured in prison but he refuses to give information, bravely. A fellow prisoner briefly befriends him and gives him warnings about confessing to a crime; Omar says he will never confess to anything, which proves to be his undoing - the seeming friend is an Israeli intelligence agent, who works to win over Omar to becoming a spy for the Israelis; Omar seems to agree, but then becomes a double-agent - leading to many further complications. Despite the many nuances - a great deal of tension, as we stay strictly w/ Omar's POV and have no idea who among his co-conspirators may have turned, if anyone - the movies is a very clear narrative line and easy to follow - and even has an emotional subtext, as Omar is in love and hope to marry, but the revolution - including suspicions among his people that he may be an Israeli spy - all inform against him. Like most political movies, I guess, this one is very one-sided: the Israelis are universally horrible and the Palestinians are the noble and oppressed minority: to its credit, the film shows them assassinating an Israeli soldier in a random attack, but there is no emotional component to that death - we know nothing about the man who was shot to death or how his death may have affected family, friends, others. Still, it's a strong movie on its own terms and gives yet another window into the tragic dynamics of this increasingly insoluble crisis.

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