In 20 minutes the Israeli Tomer Shushan’s White Eye manages to convey a more insightful and constructive approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict than the current two-hour dramatic feature reconstructing the 1993 Oslo talks (Oslo) does.
Like Ahab’s whale the white bicycle is a contested object of subjective value. It carries the complex question of conflicted legality that troubles the very state of Israel. Omer is its original owner, his brand the purple heart his girlfriend put on it. Still, this an emblem of white privilege can stand in for Israel, hard won by the Jews.
But the imigrant Yunis has established his own claim on it. By buying it from the man who stole it he has established his own legal right. He added the baby-seat, which enables him to leave his infant daughter at kindergarten so he can go work in the meat-packing plant. His 250-shekel bike means more to him than the 2,000-shekel bike Omer claims. But both claims are rightful. Therein lies the challenge — and the tragedy of conflicted Israel.
The class tension is clear. “It’s my car,” Yunis tells Omer. The humble object means more to the poor man than to the richer. Here the film evokes the moral heft and dramatic authority of da Sica’s classic Bicycle Thieves (1948), where again one deeply-felt theft pointed to a tragic disproportion in social advantage and justice. (That point was missing in John Guillermin’s 1960 remake, Never Let Go. Peter Sellers headed a car-theft gang that deprived mailman Richard Todd of the car he needed for his job. The stakes were batheticaly lower)
The background action confirms that drama. As an Eritrean illegal Yunis is especially vulnerable when the Israeli Omer involves the police. So are the other illegals who hide in the meat freezer when the police arrive and scurry to brief safety after.
Hence the other drama in the background. An unknown prostitute teeters off for a presumably sexual transaction in a small car. This self-selling transaction plays out in real time during Omer’s dealing with Yunis. Again the car owner has the advantage. Again a human is reduced to transactional meat.
The police are the usual Israeli authority, wavering, tense, bent to the letter of the law. They freeze on the formality of complaint and documented ownership.
As for the other Israelis, the first merchant is willing to cut the chains for Omer if he’s paid — but not after the police are involved. A theatre worker is more adventurous, providing the tool Omer needs to cut the chain.
Omer’s pursuit of his ownership — of the bike as the Israeli’s of the land — results in an unjust justice, the downfall of the innocent Yunis. Here this drama establishes a conflicting legality that the usual debate over Israeli/Palestinian rights, based solely on the letter of history -- and how the arguer chooses to frame it -- neglects to find.
Omer owned the bike originally. Yunis innocently bought it later and improved it (the baby seat). So both have conflicting but just claims over it.
The plant manager proposes a fair solution: Omer can buy it back for what Yunis paid for it. This respects the economic disparity. But this humane resolution arises too late. With the arrival of the police the process becomes uncontainable, injustice inevitable. Yunis pays more in his expulsion than either man’s cost of the bike.
Also like Ahab’s whale the white bike connotes a prized purity but also the pallor of death. It’s a ghost bike. This potential is articulated by the graffiti artist’s word ‘corpse’ that drops down the wall behind. A present claim to legality makes a past claim ghostly, superseded.
The word also foreshadows the fate of the bike. When Omer finally frees “his” bike, it’s newly freighted with his inadvertent destruction of Yunis’s life and family. In light of its cost to Yunis, Omer can't live with that bike. Now Omer doesn’t just cut the chain but — echoing the threatened wisdom of Solomon — cuts the bike in two as well. Having set out to free the bike, now he frees himself from it.
To complete the parable, whatever weight the warring “legalities” over the land are accorded the bitter result is the contested value’s destruction. That’s how the titular white eye is the white bike we see through..
