"When Chronicle of a Disappearance won a prize at Venice, I was
careful not to say that I was Palestinian; I was afraid people would
applaud more loudly if I did."
-Elia Suleiman
In a recent article for Cahiers du Cinema, Frederic Strauss, described Palestininan filmmakers as filmmaker-ambassadors. Implicit in this description is the added burden, for these artists, of representing an entire people as opposed to simply their own views or ideas on a given subject matter. One of the remarkable qualities of Elia Suleiman's first film, Chronicle of a Disappearance is that it eleagantly balances both these tendancies. The film uses an elliptical and occasionally opaque structure to relate the tale of a Palestinian filmmaker named Elia Suleiman who has returned to Palestine. The expected ambivalence, confusion, amusement, despair and elation that comes with this journey are all conveyed in the film. This is seen through a number of episodes that are presented, almost as a simple travelogue, except that a carefully controlled style and a number of associative devices are used to elevate this material in masterful ways.
Suleiman achieves considerable economy of means by keeping his production modes relatively simple: non-professional actors, natural lighting, location shooting. However, his actual use of these tools is by no means simple. It would have perhaps been tempting to offer a more straight forward narrative, in the vein of recent 'social realism' such as (Sandrine Veysset's) Will There be Snow For Christmas, an accomplished film in it's own right. Instead, however, Suleiman uses an episodic structure marked by a number of careful repetitions and variations. A car repeatedly comes to a halt outside of a cafe and the drivers have an altercation or exchange of some kind; the 'Holy Land Souvenir Shop' is repeatedly framed in long-shot, with usually one key element of motion either being introduced or withdrawn from the frame etc.. While specific interpretations will vary, it is the overall technique: the juxtaposing of seemingly similiar yet disparate scenes as to tease out inquiries that is telling. These are moments in time...a people that has perhaps grown eerily accustomed to being marginalized by an annexing culture that denys them both their history and their future. In a recent interview Suleiman asserted that, "...a principle reason for [outsiders] wanting peace today, is to deny the existence of Palestinans before 1948; to not have to deal with this problem."
One of the most notable aspects of the film is Suleiman's restrained use of the camera. For the most part scenes are framed from a single static position. But this is not the arbitraray static camera that has come to plague so many, fiscally challenged and aesthetically bankrupt Americain Independant filmmakers. This is not the 'Look-ma-no-cuts' style of Jim Mackay (Girlstown) or Neil Labutte (In The Compny of Men). Suleiman employs Bressonian rigour in choosing the composition, angle and particularly the articulation between his shots. The result is a considerable density despite the spare means described earlier. This 'persistence' of the camera alludes to a feeling of the need to document. A need to describe and represent in the absence of an official history for Palestinians. The insistence of a certain computer journal to perpetually record the words "The next day", as if this in itself were enough, reinforces this notion.
The film is at its best when it betrays the comic sensibility of its director. The opening monologue of a woman sitting on a couch indulging in neighbourhood gossip, the meeting of two friends who shake hands, offer each other cigarettes and light them exactly mirroring each others gestures, the bufoonery of Israeli police as they raid a woman's house and fail to see her despite an obvious presence (more concerned with being policemen than with recognizing their foe.) all provide humorous counterpoints to the more serious undertones of the film. Suleiman has provided an exceptionally well realized work that we can only hope will spearhead continued efforts from Palestinian filmmakers in Palestine and around the world.
-- -Omar Odeh http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/3920
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