Sense of Need is a film about a Palestinian named Yusuf, known as Joseph while studying music in San Francisco. Directed and written by Palestinian newcomer Shady Srour, the film takes several minutes to present streams of consciousness at various traumatic times in Joseph's confused mind before filmviewers will realize that he suffers from performance anxiety one week before the day in 2004 when he is to play the piano in a recital that will determine whether he receives a Master's Degree in Music from a university in San Francisco. However, the movie never specifically identifies performance anxiety as his problem; instead, the manifestations of his unease are described by such terms as fugue state and synaethesia, and specific connections with the traumas are not at all clear. When the film begins, Yusuf (played by the director himself) voiceovers that he was born in 1973 and almost given away by mistake to Jewish parents in the hospital. At the age of seven, Yusuf's father sold his automobile to buy him a piano; presumably, he exhibited of a lot of music talent. The same year, 1980, his father died, so his family (including his mother and four sisters) moved to live with her mother in Jerusalem in an apartment straddling the division between the Israeli and Palestinian quarters of the city. Caught up in the intifada of 1981, he was terrorized by Israeli soldiers, and the terror of that experience both appears to have prompted his decision to study music in San Francisco and accounts for the performance anxiety that challenges his ambition to receive a college degree. The most complex part of the film is what he does to cope with his psychological state, with the help of his thesis adviser David (played by Creg Martinez) and therapist Rebecca (played by Suzanne Glover); at same time, the manifestations of trauma are painful scenes for filmviewers. There are brief references to Nietzsche, Baudrillard, Foucault, and Backtin, but the presentation resembles the surreal ramblings of William Faulkner and James Joyce, including an animation scene. If Sense of Need suggests what might have happened to one well-educated victim of Israel's crackdown on the Palestinian uprising, the obvious implications for the rest of the Palestinian population are left to filmviewers after they leave the cinema to discuss the film at a nearby coffeehouse. MH
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