HIAM ABASS, ALI SULIMAN IN LEMON TREE

Withered fruit

If you've got lemons, you make lemonade. But in Israel, it seems, you make a security threat.

When a new Israeli defense minister moves in across from a lemon grove, security officers deem it a possible hiding place for terrorists and want it taken out ASAP. Palestinian widow Salma Zidane (Hiam Abbass of The Visitor), who lives in a nice old house next to this grove and has lovingly tended it ever since she inherited it from her father when very young, opposes this action all the way up to the Israeli High Court of Justice. With determined young Palestinian Authority lawyer Ziad Daud (Ali Suliman), a divorcé with a child in Russia, taking her case, she wins a small victory that feels to her like a defeat.

In its symbolic depiction of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this little film is guilty of some simplifications but manages to touch many of the bases. If only the result didn't feel so limp and hopeless; but maybe that's just a fruit of the way things are, and this film dramatizes "true stories," according to the director. He also featured the prolific Abass in his 2004 The Syrian Bride, which like this he co-authored with Palestinian former journalist Suha Arraf. He seems to be getting better at the art of depicting Israel-Arab issues with a human face--though if you want to see a cracking good Israeli movie with political resonance, you should try Joseph Cedar's Beaufort, and if you want to see the Palestinians' plight depicted with ironic brilliance, you must turn to the films of Elia Suleiman.

In Riklis' new film, Defense Minister Israel Navon (Doron Tavory) has chosen to move into a new house by the green line, at Zur HaSharon, right near the Israel-West Bank border. Navon is acutely aware of image and realizes appearing afraid of a lemon grove will make him look silly, but he can't buck the authority of the military or his security guards. A dominant irony of the piece is that the rulers and the oppressed all feel powerless.

Lemon Tree dramatizes other complexities of the Israeli situation. To locals, Salma is known as "Umm Nasser," as the mother of her firstborn son, but the title has a grim irony since her Nasser is washing dishes in a DC bar, only hoping to study computer science. Umm Nasser lets Ziad stay at her house overnight. They become close, and Ziad is drawn to Salma's haggard but noble beauty. This does not go unperceived in the male-dominated Palestinian society. Salma gets two threatening visits from older men who say she's disgracing her late husband and her family name in seeking publicity and being linked with this young man and that she must drop him and the case.

In contrast the Navons' daughter is a child of privilege, an undergraduate at Georgetown, but complaining that it's an imposition to be there. Her mom Mira (Rona Lipaz-Michael) claims to be happy but later admits the love is gone from her marriage. She may be dissatisfied with being little more than a high level housewife. She must be noticing how her husband is always surrounded in his "work" by pretty women. She disregards both security and image issues and simply feels taking out the lemon grove is utterly wrong. She embarrasses her husband by saying so to the press. She's barred from connecting directly with Salma. The grove is fenced off now and has an overhead guard post manned by the requisite harmless dog soldier (Danny Leshman) listening to tapes of some nutty IQ test. When Mira goes over to Salma's door, one of the thuggish security guards drags her back home. Their difference over this issue seems to be ripping apart the minister's marriage.

Riklis feels such cases show the openness of the Israeli court system, but that is hard to reconcile with the tone of the two trials, or the female High Court justice's Solmon-like decision to have a large number of the lemon trees cut down to a height of 30 centimeters--a few inches better than uprooting them. It's one thing to get a day in court; another to get a fair decision. But the fact that Mira can spill all her objections to her liberal journalist friend Tamar Gera (Smadar Yaaron) does show the variety of the Israeli press and the volatility of its politics. The prime minister can't come to the Nadars' housewarming because of a crisis in the ruling party. And so on. There's a lot going on. But it doesn't help Palestinians, and the separation wall finally comes to divide Zidanes from Navons, so you'd need a periscope to see the little stumps of the trees from the minister's side.

All the main characters are clichés, but the actors save them by adding some nuance. Doron Tavory plays the minister as an oily, duplicitous ass whose charm is evident, if shallow. Lipaz-Michael, as his wife, gives the feeling of not knowing yet where she's going. Abbas is almost too severe and noble to be true; such perfection is hard to relate to, or see as real. But like Lipaz-Michael, she plays with restraint, and so when she explodes, she has a vulnerability and power that are strong. Finally, though, the hopeless dynamics of the Israel-Palestine situation appear to limit both the characters and the actors playing them.

The case gets international attention, so Nasser sees it on TV at work in the States and yells, "that's my mom!" Ziad and Umm Nasser are stopped outside Jerusalem in broad daylight for a "curfew" and would never make it to the High Court's final hearing at all were it not for the fortuitous appearance at the checkpoint of a Palestinian bigwig who can pull strings. Far worse happens in real life, of course.

An Israeli will tell you that the High Court is wonderfully democratic to have heard the case, and that this is a humanistic and hopeful film. It struck me as admirably well-meaning, but far from brilliant; it tends to limp along much of the way and just sort of peter out. Rather than uplifting it is profoundly depressing. An Israeli will also tell you that the lemon trees needed to be chopped down, because terrorists really would hide in them. Maybe they would. But the Defense Minister didn't have to move there, did he? Only if he hadn't, there'd have been no movie.

_________________
©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.