Shooting in Palestine???

You'd presume a line like this

Shooting on "The Promised Land" is slated to begin this fall on location in Palestine.

would raise concern.

It really did appear -

A.  Where is this 'Palestine'?

B.  Isn't there enough shooting in the Promised Land?

But this is about that Michael Winterbottom film that, as far as I have been reliably informed, has not even gone into any production phases due to financial issues.

It has been criticised and even lambasted.

If creating something called (as above) "Palestine", then there really is concern for historical accuracy.  Even for the cinema.

^

I Am Quoted

Quoted in Colin Firth’s Upcoming Travesty posted by Arnold Ahlert:

That viewpoint was echoed by Yisrael Medad who works at Menachem Begin Heritage Center where Winterbottom reportedly went to do some of his aforementioned research. “I had the opportunity to introduce him to the vast literature on the underground struggle against the British and the political interpretative dispute,” said Medad. “I also pointed out the period’s complexity but the simple stories of heroism. He seemed quite uneasy and indicated that the real period he was after was the late 1930s. That, to me, indicated an attempt to pillory the Jews as ‘terrorists’ no better, and probably worse, than the Arabs.”

What's this about?

[Colin] Firth will be playing the role of British Assistant District Commissioner Robert Chambers in The Promised Land, directed by Michael Winterbottom. The current script, a romance between Thomas Wilkin, a British police officer responsible for tracking down members of underground Zionist groups in British Mandate of Palestine, and Shoshana Borochov, daughter of Dov Ber Borochov, a left-wing Zionist, presents the story, according to Pollack, as “one in which the British favor the Jews over the Arabs, the Jews repay British kindness with cruelty, and Arab violence against civilians and support for the Third Reich are airbrushed out of the picture.”

Read the rest here.


^

So, Winterbottom Has Bottomed Out

Mili Avital is no right-wing, fanatic, nationalist Israeli. Although a Hollywood star and married to Charles Randolph, she still has the ability to recognize a problem. I will return to her promptly.


If you recall, I have been suspect of Michael Winterbottom’s new film project.


First, they visited the Begin Center and I had the opportunity to introduce him to the vast literature on the underground struggle against the British and the political interpretative dispute. I also pointed out the period's complexity but the simple stories of heroism. He seemed quite uneasy and indicated that the real period he was after was the late 1930s. That, to me, indicated an attempt to pillory the Jews as ‘terrorists’ no better, and probably worse, than the Arabs.


Then, for over a year, no contact. I sent a note to one of his assistants but it was quite noncommittal and then, poof!, we learn that the script concerns Yair Stern, Tom Wilkin, King David Hotel, etc., sounding all mixed up chronologically and also displaying political and ideological bias.


Well, here’s where Mili Avital comes in. She was interviewed in Ma’ariv this past Shabbat and there, in the magazine section, “Sof Shavua”, page 75, (*) she notes that the country is literally part of her body and that the link to it is quite emotional despite the distance. That relationship permits her to “make clear decisions”.


The interviewer asks, “what does that mean?” and she replies:

“When I returned to here [Avital is filming a new series, ‘The Kidnapped’, in Israel – YM], I had received a script of Michael Winterbottom to read on the history of the undergrounds. It is a script that has drawn much attention, Colin Firth will play in it, but it was so anti-Zionist that I closed it after 20 pages. I read it and there were tears in my eyes. This director appreciates me a lot and I dreamed to work with him but it pains me to read how he describes the beginning of Zionism from such an extreme point of view. I thought he would deal with the emotional and psychological experience of the members of the underground, not that he will make a political accounting with them.”

Well, it’s quite clear enough where this film is heading.

_________

You don't believe? Here's the Hebrew:

ברור לך שעצם העובדה שאת לא גרה בישראל מעמידה בספק את היכולת שלך להטיף למשהו.

"קודם כל, אני האחרונה שתטיף. מבחינתי, הארץ היא כמו איבר שהשארתי מאחור. הקשר שלי לפה הוא כל כך רגשי, מהול בגעגועים ושמחה ועצב וזיכרונות. העובדה שאני עדיין יכולה להתחבר לתרבות הישראלית מהמקום שאני באה ממנו, שהוא קצת מעורבב, קצת היברידי - נדירה ויקרה לי מאוד. וזה גם גורם לי לעשות בחירות ברורות מאוד".

כלומר?

"כשחזרתי לפה, קיבלתי לקריאה תסריט של מייקל ווינטרבוטום (במאי בריטי מוערך שביים את "אנשי המסיבות" ו"וונדרלנד"), על תולדות המחתרות. זה תסריט מאוד מדובר, קולין פירת' אמור לשחק, אבל הוא היה כל כך אנטי ציוני שסגרתי אותו אחרי 20 עמודים. קראתי את זה והיו לי דמעות בעיניים. זה במאי שנורא אהב אותי וחלמתי לעבוד איתו, וכאב לי לקרוא איך הוא מתאר את תחילת הציונות מנקודת מבט קיצונית כל כך. חשבתי שהוא ידבר על המסע הרגשי והפסיכולוגי של חברי המחתרות, לא שהוא יתחשבן איתם פוליטית".

Will Winterbottom Bottom-up?

In another blog, I had related that Michael Winterbottom came to the Begin Center to research his upcoming film on the clash between the British Mandatory regime and both the Jewish and Arabs, each seeking their political goals. I showed him books and we spoke about various aspects of his new film. He was then set on the 1936-39 period as the Arab-Jewish conflict during those years of the "Disturbances" or the Arab Revolt interested him as a forerunner to today's events.

Seems he has now moved forward a decade:

Colin Firth to play Jewish underground leader in 'The Promised Land'

Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen are lining up alongside Jim Sturgess to star in Michael Winterbottom's new film The Promised Land, the film's backers said Sunday.
Due to start shooting in late summer, The Promised Land is billed as a political crime thriller set in British-ruled Palestine at the end of World War II, and covers the period leading to the establishment of Israel.

[ This site has it thus: "A political crime-thriller, The Promised Land is set in British-ruled Palestine at the end of the Second World War, and covers the pivotal period in the region’s history leading to the formation of Israel.

Sturgess and Macfadyen will play British police officers trying to end a campaign of violence and killings by an extreme right-wing Jewish group led by the charismatic poet, Avraham Stern."]

Firth has been cast as Avraham Stern, the leader of the Underground organization Lehi, which lead a violent campaign against the British Mandate in Palestine during the 1930s and 1940s. The British authorities also called the Lehi "The Stern Gang."...Sturgess and Macfadyen will play British police officers trying to end the Jewish revolutionaries and underground groups' violent campaign to expel the British, which culminated in the 1946 attack on the British headquarters at King David Hotel in Jerusalem that left dozens of British soldiers dead.

As he hasn't come back to me, although I did send off a mail to his assistant who came with him to the Begin Center last month, I am going to guess that there will be, despite "artistic license", unnecessary errors. Hopefully, but probably not, they will be minor.

Since Stern was killed by the British while handcuffed in 1942, and Menachem Begin led the Irgun from 1944 and the King David explosion took place in 1946, if someone doesn't have a handle on dates, personalities, the intra-Yishuv politics as well as the British Colonial policy that was set in 1939 by the White Paper that reneged on the entire concept of a Jewish National Home, the film might simply be a vehicle for personal outlooks and interpretations rather than a work of art based on real events.

Did the Irgun and Lehi engage in terror or in urban guerrilla warfare against a repressive regime of occupation? Did either specifically target civilians or were legitimate liberation resistance operations directed against the police, the army and the government, even in the instance of the King David bombing?

I know of another production in its early stages which intends to follow, as faithfully as possible, books like Begin's "The Revolt" so as to assure that, at the very least, historical facts will not be manipulated.

I do hope Winterbottom won't, so to say, bottom-up on this project.