Dir.
Scandar Copti, Yaron Shani , 2009,
Germany/Israel ,
120 min
Cast:
Fouad Habash ,
Nisrine Rihan ,
Ibrahim Frege
Review by
Philippa Bradnock
This first feature by writer/director duo Yaron Shani and Scandar Copti is an ambitious undertaking. The pair used 300 non-professional actors to make this film about the Ajami neighbourhood of Jaffa , a troubled adjunct to glittering Israeli capital Tel Aviv. The result has won nine Israeli Ophir awards, special mention at Cannes and an Oscar nomination for best foreign language film.
Ajami's intentions are clearly political, and the film quickly prunes any buds of hope in a place of near despair. It is divided into (roughly) four chapters, but stories intersect and the film has a looping chronology, repeating events from different points of view or illuminating them with earlier detail. Omar's (Kabaha) family feud spills over to implicate Malek in a dangerous money-making scheme. Binj (Copti) has plans to move to Tel Aviv with his Jewish girlfriend but his brother's attack on a Jewish neighbour jeopardises their plans. Dando (Eran Naim), a Jewish police officer, searches for his missing brother and cannot separate his suspicion that Arabs were responsible from his daily work.
Copti and Shani emphasise that the improvised performances are borne out of the actors' psychological immersion in their role and their experience. This is an im press ive feat, and the acting and characterisation in Ajami is strong and watchable with none of the awkwardness that one might expect. It convincingly makes the case that Israeli-Palestinian tensions make life virtually unliveable for the Arab population and that clear double-standards operate. Dando demands information about his brother and is met with reasoning concern and an assurance that he will get it. Later the Arab friend of a suspected murder victim demands to see him and is met with forcible restraint and arrest.
But the inhabitants of Ajami are also trapped in other nets. Omar and his family are forced into a bargain they cannot hope to fulfil; the result of the operations of a criminal Arab family and the idea that all members of a family are responsible for the actions of one member. Later, Omar's budding romance with the boss's daughter Hadir (Karim) is cut short by her father's threat of violence, should she entertain the thought of an interreligious marriage. And her father's apparently altruistic acts are frequently counterproductive and leave one uneasy about his motivations. Bigotry and violence are ingrained in many of the characters' daily relationships.
It is Hadir's story which gives a fleeting view of avenues unexplored. For all its attempted realism, Ajami remains a story of male action and violence outside in the streets. Women are included only as a shadowy relational presence: mothers, daughters, girlfriends. And mostly they are required only to mourn or to be afraid of the threat of violence. What happens to these women when the men are murdered? How does the apparently emancipated Hadir react to her father's threat to 'break her bones'? This emphasis on action leads to a view which finally appears to deal only with male experience and which therefore undermines Ajami's realist aspirations.
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