Amos Gitai's English-language "Disengagement," about the eviction of Israeli settlers from Gaza..Featuring a virtuoso, disquietingly fey performance by Juliette Binoche and a compelling straight-arrow turn by Israeli heartthrob (and Gitai regular) Liron Levo, magisterial pic shifts foreground and background as it focuses on both mass displacement and its impact on a family. Displaying none of the rough edges or lumpen agitprop that often shake up Gitai's narratives, pic joyously disturbs on all levels. Distribs should take notice.
In a narrow train corridor, a French-Israeli man who isn't really French and a Dutch-Palestinian woman who isn't really Dutch share a passionate kiss and more, in an out-of-context promise of Middle Eastern detente. The man is Uli (Levo), and he is traveling to France, where his adoptive father has just died.
A hefty part of the pic takes place in that father's rundown, emptied-out digs in Avignon, where daughter Ana (Juliette Binoche) has spent the past couple weeks. Ana welcomes her long-lost brother with something close to desperation, her affection bordering on the febrile while flirting with the sexual. The link between the siblings is palpable, Ana bringing out the more tender, imaginative side of her Israeli policeman brother, Uli evoking the thoughtfulness and decisiveness hidden beneath his sister's passivity.
Ana has decided to end her loveless marriage, and a visit to her father's longtime friend and lawyer (Jeanne Moreau, in a nicely authoritative cameo) reveals the daughter she abandoned at birth is now living in an Israeli settlement in Gaza. Ana insists on traveling there with Uli, who must return in time to evict the settlers.
Though superficially similar to "Free Zone" (with its ethnically conflicted heroine experiencing culture shock on her voyage through Israel), "Disengagement" is only momentarily a road movie. Denied the ability to travel with Uli by a paranoid colleague, and stopped at checkpoints along the way, Ana winds up wandering the desert with a troupe of fanatical settlers, fervent in their belief that their God will not let them be uprooted.
Gitai's extraordinary choreography of the reunion of Ana and daughter Dana (Dana Ivgy) in the midst of the forcible eviction of the settlers is nothing short of brilliant. The confusion, grief and disbelief of the settlers, and the compassion, impatience and anger of the police swirl around the family drama in endlessly evolving patterns for the pic's amazing last act.
Tech credits are superlative, maintaining a dynamic balance between interior emotion and exterior decor.
and from another review:-
...Critics have singled out the moment when Ana is reunited with her daughter (played by Dana Ivgy) as an extraordinarily choreographed scene of great emotional depth. In one of several long tracking shots in the film, Ana comes across her daughter supervising a class of small children just shortly before the settlers are forcibly removed from their homes. The two recognize each other and tentatively embrace, Dana lightly touching her mother's face, smearing finger paint on her cheek...
...Binoche, whose maternal grandparents were imprisoned at Auschwitz, has more than a fleeting interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She has a clear recollection of when the Israeli government voted to implement a unilateral disengagement plan from the Gaza strip.
"I remember vividly when there was fear it was going to explode. And, actually, even though it was painful, it seemed that it went smoothly from an outsider's point of view. Of course, when you see documentaries, it is more complicated, and there were some conflicts. But most importantly there were no dead. It was such a vivid and painful subject," she says.
Gitai, who rose to fame and worked for a full decade in France, has since returned to Israel, where he continues to make films that tackle issues such as war, the role of women in Jewish society, and the triangulation of the individual, the family, and the State in Israel.
To Binoche, his instruction was invaluable: "I have to say that Amos has been my teacher for many years now, and we talked a lot about the situation. He taught me the history of Palestine and all the layers of conflicts. He has done some wonderful documentaries that he gave me and we discussed that many times. And it interests me, having a knowledge of what is going on. And not only reading it in newspapers which have one point of view."
Binoche points out the complexity of the situation but concedes that she was initially less sympathetic toward the Israeli settlers who had held occupation of the Gaza strip from the end of the Six-Day War in 1967 until their disengagement under orders from the Israeli government in 2005.
I have to say that when it was happening, I felt: 'Those people really have to leave this place. How come they managed to settle in 30 years ago. How was it possible? They have got to leave. There is no other way. Why do they hang onto things like that?' And when I saw the documentaries, I felt completely different. Then you realize that people were born there. Their neighbors, their friends, their education, the smells, and all the dreams that they bring are in them. And all of a sudden to have to go away," she says. "[This] was another layer that I didn't imagine as an outsider. So I felt compassion and [realized] that on each side it is very painful. It is terrible. I think it was necessary for them to go. It was completely necessary for Israel to make an effort and prove that they can do it. And I think it was the smartest move of Sharon's politics, because some of it I find very aggressive. And yet again, from an outsider's point of view the subject is endless because if you don't take sides, you somehow take a side.
"What I like about the movie is that it doesn't try to judge," she continues. "It exposes the feelings of different sides. For the Palestinians, it says: 'This is our land. And we have taken a lot bombs. We have nothing. We have stones. We are poor. And [the Israelis] have the power. We were chased in '48.'"
Binoche notes that during the panic of homes being torn down by bulldozers and cranes in the Gaza strip, Ana asks why are houses being destroyed when they could be used by Palestinians. "But," Binoche says, "it is the kind of question that is not a judgment. But you have to ask questions. And I think as an artist you have to be willing to expose political issues because they are human issues, and it is important to be responsible for them."
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