All this
makes "Inheritance" a perfect movie for Americans to see because so
many of the superficial button-pushing symbols are absent. We saw
it as part of the
Palestinian Film Festival at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, one of the
cultural delights of the fall season. One final superficial observation
about the meaninglessness of appearances: in this film all the Palestinian men
look Jewish.
This said,
"Inheritance" is a film about family relationships in a traditional
society under cultural pressure from Western influence. It's not a film about
war in the Middle East, but the war is real and makes everything in daily life
harder. A business man can't get a loan; his workers leave a building site
to go home to their families because jet planes are screaming by overhead on
their way to drop bombs in Lebanon. Sometimes rockets fall too near the
family's village in the borderland between the warring parties and everybody
scrambles.
Because the
people in the film look and for the most part act just like us when the family's
patriarch insists that the marriage of one of his daughters go on as planned,
the reality of war has more sting than depictions of
foreign disasters "over there" ordinarily do. That could be any of us
panicking to get our loved ones into the car in a jammed-up parking
area to race off to someplace we think is safe when rocket fire begins shaking
the earth.
The wedding
scene, the film's set piece, is worth the price of admission alone. The
family's youngest daughter, torn between her love for her family and
desire to "live her own life " and travel in the West doesn't want to
go, but nevertheless is dropped off at the wedding party by her English lover into the hands
of her "protector," the cousin who wants to marry her. The cousin,
who (other family members point out) "speaks perfect English" tries
in a sensitive, non-bullying way to ask her about this English boyfriend. Her
older brother, the over-extended businessman, takes the opposite tack, calling
her a slut and saying he will kill her to protect the family honor while the
wedding band makes merry. Everyone else, including the father she loves, warns
her that if she follows her own path she will lose her family.
Meanwhile,
the "good" traditional, likable sister is modeling the satisfactions
of sticking with the family. Everyone joins in the ritual dances in a natural,
unstudied way, enjoying the sense of knowing who they are and valuing their
place in the world. Everyone in this lighthearted but profound moment knows
they belong. The scene feels completely unstaged -- everything else, as the
saying goes, is for mastercard.
Meanwhile
number two, however, the politician brother who's running for mayor slips off
for an adulterous tryst.
And then rockets
start landing and a couple hundred guests rush to their cars in a panic to try
to flee.
The war
the film intentionally fails to name -- in order to broaden the relevance
of its story and avoid particular political circumstances -- is the 2006 "July
war" when Israel bombed throughout Lebanon in response to Hezbollah's
capture of a single Israeli soldier. The film, the directorial debut of
Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass, avoids politics in the narrow sense to treat
deeper, everyday issues. Should we keep our children home, safe in the old
ways, even though opportunities are few and some at least wish to fly away to "live
their own lives" with the freedom the products of fortunate backgrounds
enjoy in the West?
All the
portrayals, even the settings, are shaded. The main character's eldest sister
lives with a do-nothing husband who pretends to drive a taxi cab but finds no
business. But whenever we see her, she is enjoying the shade of her beautiful semi-tropical
garden.
A good
movie has that quality. However stressful and challenging its subject, the
truth of art has its balm, its solace.
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