It Must Be Heaven (15.)
Directed by Elia Suleiman.
Starring Elia Suleiman, Tarik Kopty, Kareem Ghneim, George Khleifi, Ali Suliman and Gael Garcia Bernal. In cinemas. 97 mins
This is a rave review for a film by the esteemed Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman, but I'm not taking sides. Of course, he is – being a political filmmaker comes with the territory - although perhaps not as vehemently as you might expect. In one scene a French film producer turns down his latest film project because it isn't Palestinian enough. Suleiman is sparing with his anger and lets it seep out through a kind of world-weary disdain that is both intensely poignant and a little bit hopeful.
In his previous film The Time That Remains he left his homeland and then returned; in this one, he is off again. After an opening third in Nazareth, he travels to Paris and New York. Wherever he goes he spends his time sitting in cafes or bars with a coffee or drink, watching the world go by, trying to blend in but always standing out. Nowhere seems like home.
This is a funny film. Not hilarious, not a laugh riot, but quality over quantity amusing. Over a long but only sporadically productive career (4 features/ 23 years) the Palestinian writer/ director/ producer/ star has perfected a style of transcendental visual deadpan that is all his own. It's an enormously humane brand of humour that is enlightening but never didactic, clever but not smug and so pure that often you're not exactly sure why something is funny. Watching a great comedy is often followed by a comedown period, a sense of being cheapened by falling prey to the mechanics of the jokes. Good visual humour though has a purity to it and the happiness stays with you for much longer than verbal humour. These are laughs worth laughing.
The structure is incredibly loose, just a series of sketches, often shot with a static camera but it all ties up into a coherent vision. He's like a Roy Andersson who works on location, not in the studio. His main subject is the absurdity of expressions of authority and he has lots of fun with police vehicles and tanks. His Paris is curiously empty of people.
Central to the vision is Suleiman himself, who is the quiet, still centre of almost every shot and silent apart from a few words. He is Jacques Tati, but a Tati who isn't always interfering and initiating chaos. He has taken the stoney face of Buster Keaton and extended it to his whole body and the world as defined by his camera frame. If truth be told, he's not that great a comic performer – his deadpan face doesn't transmit that much – but he really knows how to direct himself.
Suleiman is a great filmmaker but while most great filmmakers (and most mediocre ones) conspire to make it all look terribly difficult, Suleiman makes filmmaking seem incredibly easy. All you have to do is think of something worth filming and then point a camera at it. You can watch one of the world's great filmmakers and think, I could do that – if I only had a brain.
Directed by Elia Suleiman.
Starring Elia Suleiman, Tarik Kopty, Kareem Ghneim, George Khleifi, Ali Suliman and Gael Garcia Bernal. In cinemas. 97 mins
This is a rave review for a film by the esteemed Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman, but I'm not taking sides. Of course, he is – being a political filmmaker comes with the territory - although perhaps not as vehemently as you might expect. In one scene a French film producer turns down his latest film project because it isn't Palestinian enough. Suleiman is sparing with his anger and lets it seep out through a kind of world-weary disdain that is both intensely poignant and a little bit hopeful.
In his previous film The Time That Remains he left his homeland and then returned; in this one, he is off again. After an opening third in Nazareth, he travels to Paris and New York. Wherever he goes he spends his time sitting in cafes or bars with a coffee or drink, watching the world go by, trying to blend in but always standing out. Nowhere seems like home.
This is a funny film. Not hilarious, not a laugh riot, but quality over quantity amusing. Over a long but only sporadically productive career (4 features/ 23 years) the Palestinian writer/ director/ producer/ star has perfected a style of transcendental visual deadpan that is all his own. It's an enormously humane brand of humour that is enlightening but never didactic, clever but not smug and so pure that often you're not exactly sure why something is funny. Watching a great comedy is often followed by a comedown period, a sense of being cheapened by falling prey to the mechanics of the jokes. Good visual humour though has a purity to it and the happiness stays with you for much longer than verbal humour. These are laughs worth laughing.
The structure is incredibly loose, just a series of sketches, often shot with a static camera but it all ties up into a coherent vision. He's like a Roy Andersson who works on location, not in the studio. His main subject is the absurdity of expressions of authority and he has lots of fun with police vehicles and tanks. His Paris is curiously empty of people.
Central to the vision is Suleiman himself, who is the quiet, still centre of almost every shot and silent apart from a few words. He is Jacques Tati, but a Tati who isn't always interfering and initiating chaos. He has taken the stoney face of Buster Keaton and extended it to his whole body and the world as defined by his camera frame. If truth be told, he's not that great a comic performer – his deadpan face doesn't transmit that much – but he really knows how to direct himself.
Suleiman is a great filmmaker but while most great filmmakers (and most mediocre ones) conspire to make it all look terribly difficult, Suleiman makes filmmaking seem incredibly easy. All you have to do is think of something worth filming and then point a camera at it. You can watch one of the world's great filmmakers and think, I could do that – if I only had a brain.
