The Time That Remains: Elia Suleiman Contemplates Israeli History

Marcel Hartmann © Independent Film Channel LLC

Bakri as the brooding paladin of Suleiman's own past.

Details

Runs at Northwest Film Forum, Fri., April 1–Thurs., April 7. Not rated. 105 minutes.

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More About

• Elia Suleiman
• Nazareth
• The Time That Remains
• Saleh Bakri
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media

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"Where am I?" a disoriented Israeli cabdriver asks his dispatcher at the beginning of Elia Suleiman's The Time That Remains. This pointillist portrait of Israeli Arabs in Nazareth tries to answer that plaintive question in four quiet, uneven, partly autobiographical, seriocomic episodes set in 1948, 1970, 1980, and the present. Suleiman's treatment of the '48 Arab-Israeli War showcases the Palestinian filmmaker's eye for a mordant set piece, as Nazareth's mayor must pose for a photo with Israeli army officers after signing terms of surrender. The photographer's big ass fills the screen, pointed directly at the rest of the city's Arab leaders. These early sections, based on the diaries of Suleiman's father, Fuad (the striking Saleh Bakri), are the film's strongest, thanks in great measure to director of photography Marc-André Batigne's vibrant images of the old city's sunbaked glory. Once the focus shifts to Elia himself, played by the director as a wide-eyed silent-movie naif, the pace slackens. Suleiman's a more assured director than comedian. But individual, Tati-worthy gags still have great power, as when a pitched battle between Arab doctors and Israeli soldiers plays out in a single sustained long shot through the windows of a hospital corridor. And when Elia's aged, diabetic mother—years after the arrest of her husband—sits on her apartment balcony, ignoring the fireworks exploding over those Galilean hills, it's a complicated moment in a potent film.