Wajib

Palestinian writer/director Annemarie Jacir uses the male-bonding Road Movie genre to provide a cross-sectional survey of Christian Palestinians’ civilian life in Nazareth.  The focus on Christians here is striking because their life is far different from what we normally see depicted there. This is a comfortable, well-educated, successful community, though still chafing under Israeli control. 

As father and son hand-deliver invitations to the daughter’s wedding they recover warm memories — and revive old tensions. The father raises the son’s hackles with his reflexive sneer at a homosexual, his Old School moralism, his fibs of convenience.  

  Of course, even in this comfortable part of the troubled area if anything can go wrong it will. That includes the mistaken date on the printed invitations. A melee erupts when a motorist jumps the line at a gas station. Shadi’s fancy Italian shirt is the casualty.

As the father is a popular local teacher he’s well-known and respected in the community. But that comes at a cost too — his need to appease and even to befriend the Jewish watchdog in his school. The father is the family pragmatist. To comfort his neighbours he fibs about his son’s career, his unlikely return, his romantic commitment. 

That service is why the father stayed. On the phone he describes the superlative — and apparently mythic — beauties of the land, contrary to the visible evidence of broken neighbourhoods, amassed garbage, the general ruins. He has been living in the real Palestine, serving his family and the community, without the romanticism of any myth or cause. Hence the film’s title: Duty.

In contrast to his staying there to raise his two children, his wife wanted more than that life could give her. She abandoned her family to run off with a lover to America. Her eagerly-awaited return for her daughter’s wedding depends on her dying husband. The father stills feels her humiliation. 

Son Shadi similarly escaped the confines of his father’s life. He made a career in architecture and found a modern love in Italy. His lover and her family are more militant, the PLO. His father disdains of their lavish living abroad, the self-service and futility of their warfare and the amorality of his son’s relationship. His dignity lay in staying and serving his community at home, however that may have compromised him.

We hear about the school’s Jewish spy Ronnie and we see two Israeli soldiers enjoying felafel, but otherwise the film focuses on the Arab community. Several of the friends are Arab Christians, as we see from their decorated Christmas trees, the Santa market and the remarks about having “a winter wedding.” A neighbour worries about the growth of ISIS in the neighbourhood. 

We don’t often see such a spectrum of Arab life in the area. Hence the hosts’ offers of coffee segue into booze. One young girl, her family out, tries to seduce Shadi. His father’s old school-mate Georgette extends a similar invitation to him.

The cultural cross-section extends to the car radio. The father wants to play the old style traditional singer who will perform at the wedding. The son prefers the nostalgia of Procol Harum’s “Whiter Shade of Pale,” which collects additional irony from the earlier scene, when the father accidentally kills “an Israeli dog” — that’s white. A news report addresses the corruption charges against PM Netanyahu and his wife’s denials. Even on this spectrum of swarthy there’s the implication of white privilege. 
     Despite this careful structure and schematic, the subtleties in the performances, script and direction give this film the saving sense of life caught in the flow. It’s a rich glimpse into particular lives in a troubled place and time we more commonly experience from the larger stories in the headlines.