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O JERUSALEM CRIES OUT FOR PEACE BETWEEN ISRAEL & THE PALESTINIANS
 Nearly a docudrama, O Jerusalem begins at New York in 1946, when Said Chahine (played by Said Taghmaoui) and his Jewish friend Bobby Goldman (played by JJ Feild) are happily enjoying each other’s company. When the British mandate appears to be at an end, shortly after Jewish terrorists have bombed the British headquarters in Jerusalem, they go to Palestine in anticipation of a return of sovereignty. Clearly, the British are eager to leave when they arrive. But the UN vote to recognize Israel as a state in 1948 serves to mobilize a coalition of Arab-speaking states to push Israel into the sea. Jewish heroism and a UN-requested ceasefire, honored by the Jordanians and others, gives sufficient respite to the beleaguered Jews so that they rebound after seven days and establish sovereignty over a sliver of territory along the Mediterranean while both sides try to keep Jerusalem out of the war. The film is largely a propagandistic effort to inform Jews and Palestinians that at one time they were friends at a personal level, and for the sake of Jerusalem (translation: City of Peace) they should observe mutual respect within separate sovereign states. At the same time, perspicacious filmviewers may connect a voiceover at the end about the resulting 750,000 Palestinians refugees with the seeds of fifty more years of conflict. Although the Political Film Society, accordingly, has nominated O Jerusalem as the best film of 2007 to celebrate the cause of peace, the film may provide an analogy to present-day Iraq for some filmviewers. The similarities and differences may provoke some thought for those who are attentive to historical lessons, though the movie’s director, Elie Chouraqui, evidently has no such ambition, having based the script on the best-selling 1972 novel by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre. MH
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SIR WALTER RALEIGH FALLS FOR A QUEEN IN ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE
 Elizabeth: The Golden Age dramatizes the era in which England defeated Spain, the superpower of the day, in a naval battle. Rather than focusing on the naval commander who is responsible for the victory, the film imagines a supposed relationship between Queen Elizabeth (played by Kate Blanchett) and Walter Raleigh (played by Clive Owen), who tries to court her, is knighted, falls out of favor when he marries one of Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting (played by Abbie Cornish), and then plays a central part in the naval battle by setting ships on fire to ram the Spanish Armada. Although there is no record that Elizabeth had any amorous interest in Raleigh, he was appointed Captain of the Guard. Founder of the Virginia colony (so named because Elizabeth was a virgin), he was in fact ashore at the time of the 1588 naval battle. Nevertheless, filmviewers are informed that half of Britain then consisted of Catholics, including her sister Mary Queen of Scots (played by Samantha Morton), and that Spain’s King Philip II (played by Jordi Mollà) goes to war primarily to replace Elizabeth with Mary, whereas in fact the Spanish were trying to maintain control of most of what is now called Belgium against an Anglo-Dutch alliance. Elizabeth’s declaration of religious toleration in the service of nationalism is perhaps the most profound statement in the film. Directed by Shehkar Kapur, the film ends with a title noting that Spain, which suffered its worst naval defeat in the battle, was bankrupted in ten years. Anyone looking for contemporary parallels might perhaps reflect that the American government, by trying unsuccessfully to control events in the Middle East that have gone awry, has become so bankrupted in only six years of the “war on terror” that the value of the dollar has fallen to an all-time low. However, the film instead appears to celebrate the rise of Britain as a superpower. MH
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