Divine Intervention (2002)

The film’s sub-title — “A Chronicle of Love and Pain” — plays in its opening song, Mohammed Abdulwahab’s 1950s hit, "Me, suffering, and your love.” That defines the film’s overall melancholy. The latter half is more specifically governed by “You Put A Spell On Me,” that opens over a paralyzing stare between a Palestinian and a Jewish driver — holding up the traffic. 

In a prologue, a knife-wielding gang of delinquents hunt down and stab a Santa Claus — in Israeli Palestinian director Elia Suleiman’s birthplace, Nazareth. As the boys show no interest in Santa’s packages their motive appears to be simple malice. Taking Santa Claus as the icon of the Nazareth religion establishes this comedy’s secularity — playfully rejecting the titular promise of divine intervention. This Santa reappears in the hospital where everyone smokes in the corridors — consistent with the characters’ overall self-destructive absurdity.

The narrative is framed by two ranting motorists. In the opening scene a man stands beside his car, then drives along, muttering vulgar epithets about everyone he passes. The scene confirms the setting of casual malevolence. At the end a larger, angrier motorist rants about an inconsiderate motorist who obstructed him.

For the first quarter the film’s episodic structure presents a society that has lost its community. The characters are isolates in tension with each other. The observational humour makes this feel like a Tati film without Hulot. The relative absence of dialogue universalizes the characters’ alienation. 

Two old man sit on a rooftop watching the comedy below, without engaging. Another man is indignant that his neighbour throws back into his garden the bags of garbage that he has flung into hers. An older man collects empty bottles on his roof, then throws them down at the police below. When he finds a kid’s errant soccer ball he punctures it. He digs a hole into the street, trapping a car that has been negotiating the difficult turn.  The rare scene of helpfulness rings futile. Individuals wait at a defunct bus stop despite the neighbour’s alert.

We learn that the first man has gone bankrupt and is being repossessed. As he, in his pyjamas, ritually processes his mail over breakfast, not paying his bills, he has a heart attack. That kicks the film into higher drama. 

On the way to the hospital his son E.S. (played by director Elia Suleiman) tosses out an apricot pit — which explodes an army tank beside the road. Later a drive-by shooting blows up a house. The character is again the director when he plucks plot points off post-its on his apartment wall. That’s how we learn -- or he decides -- that his father died. The post-it plotting earns the “metacinema” label.

The violence and politics in this section explain the earlier Arab anomie and alienation. In the checkpoint scenes they are oppressed by an arbitrary and absurd tyranny. In comic relief three soldiers arrive, do a dance routine to clean their shoes, then leave. Meanwhile three arabs stand, arms raised, helpless against a wall. Against the Palestinians’ disorder the Jewish soldiers again act choreographed in their shooting range exercise.

The heroine first appears at a checkpoint, which she seductively strides through, wilting the soldiers’ raised rifles.Magically, the tower collapses as she passes. The woman softens that erotic threat when she and E.S. meet at the border, caress each others’ hands, then depart in their separate cars. The implication is that the checkpoint separates them. Their suppression of passion grows out of the opening scenes’ lack of spirit. Her dual presentation as gentle lover and violent soldier become the alternative poles for the character/director E.S.

In one tryst the couple release a balloon with the smiling face of Arafat. They pass through as the guards are flustered about what to do about it. The balloon wafts through the sky before finally, miraculously, coming to rest in a perfect aesthetic position atop Temple Mount.  The woman amplifies this politic when she materializes from behind a shooting range target and like a Ninja wipes out the soldiers. She uses a metal shield — in the shape of Israel — to deflect the bullets and destroy a helicopter. The radical Arab makes Israel her weapon.

In a summary epilogue E.S. and his mother sit quietly watching their pressure cooker burbling on the family stove. Will something ever boil over?

So what’s the eponymous “divine intervention”? The exploded tank? The collapsed tower? The magic balloon? The absurdity of these “divine interventions,” their very implausibility,  argue instead for human agency and responsibility. The film’s essential implication is that the Palestinian society should snap out of their deadly fragmentation and — instead of waiting for Allah —  actively resurrect their lost spirit of community. People should like E.S. take control over their lives, plucking their choices like E.S. from his wall, whether thinking of their love, their lives or their social reanimation.