It sounds like the set-up of a dystopian sci-fi movie: one land split apart; two peoples separated by a security wall; electronic surveillance devices monitoring their movements. It's actually the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the 21st century, where Arabs and Jews are being quietly ripped apart by a culture of fear and paranoia. Taking her camera on both sides of the controversial Israeli security wall, Jewish-Arab filmmaker Simone Bitton documents the nightmare of a society in which religious and political divisions have been made concrete.
Bitton's mournful documentary begins with a silent scene of Israeli workmen erecting the concrete sections of the wall. Enormous grey slabs are raised one by one by a crane and slotted into place. Filling the frame like huge tombstones, these uniformly grey wedges slowly block out the beautiful landscape that lies behind them until all we can see is grey concrete. It's an astounding, horrifying sequence - and a powerful piece of cinema.
Bitton gradually buils up a picture of the situation by speaking to ordinary Israelis and Palestinians, a belligerent government minister and Palestinian workers forced by necessity to work on the "security" or "separation" wall (the language differs depending on who she speaks to) and discovers a society that is literally splitting itself in two. Supporters claim it is a preventive necessity; opponents decry it as an excuse for a land grab and yet another attempt to dispossess the Palestinians.
"A SERIES OF CINEMATIC POSTCARDS"
Pitching the human-interest stories against the official Israeli anti-terror spiel, Bitton dispenses with the wider context to deliver a series of cinematic postcards: a bored Israeli teenage soldier checking ID cards; a tractor unspooling swathes of razor wire; Palestinians lifting a little baby over a deserted section of the wall. "The fence is worthless. Without peace it's worthless - it's a joke," claims one Israeli, a survivor of a suicide bomber. In contrast, the Palestinians Bitton interviews are largely shell-shocked. It's easy to understand why: dispossessed and forgotten, they've been turned into powerless observers of their own entombment.
In French, Arabic and Hebrew with English subtitles.
Wall (Mur) (2004)
