Life
for Palestinians under Israeli occupation may not seem
the subject of a comedy, but Divine Intervention, semiautobiographically
directed by Elia Suleiman, tries to make light of unhappy
conditions. The humor is more European than American, however,
and has little dialog, similar to Mr. Hulot's Holiday (1953).
For example, a man in a Santa Claus suit is pursued and
killed by four youth. The driver of a car waves in a friendly
manner at those whom he sees while cursing them to himself.
A man throws bagged garbage onto someone else's property,
then objects strongly when the neighbor throws the bags
back. A man destroys a road so that his neighbor's car
cannot gain access. A balloon with a picture of Yasser
Arafat is launched to distract Israeli guards at a checkpoint.
Seriously injured hospital patients puff cigarettes while
walking along a corridor and carrying their IV stands.
An Israeli police officer, unable to direct a tourist to
various sights, asks a blindfolded Palestinian prisoner
in his police van to give directions; he, in turn, points
in three different directions and later escapes from the
van. A man stockpiles beer bottles so that he can throw
them when police come to arrest him, but police use the
back entrance to apprehend him. The only plot of any substance
focuses on a pair of lovers, Elia Suleiman and Manal Khader,
who try to carry on an affair while living in Jerusalem
and Ramallah, which are on opposite sides of the al-Ram
checkpoint. On one occasion, she struts past the checkpoint
as if modeling sexy clothes, whereupon the guards stop
telling her to stop and instead put down their machine
guns. The best action occurs when Khader uses ninja kungfu
on five Israeli commandos, but that is fantasy in contrast
with the unsurprising reality that Palestinians are not
enjoying life under present circumstances. MH
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