Divine Intervention

This film by the Palestinian Elia Suleiman won awards at Cannes and elsewhere in 2002 and has a stylistic flavour reminiscent of Jacques Tati's films 'Monsieur Hulot's Holiday' and 'Mon Oncle'. The semi-silent ironic social commentary come comedy masterpiece has a sense of timelessness by being part of a century old genre grouping. It does go beyond that though by translating the genre into something which moves closer to the humour of political Brechtian darkness. There are several scenes which are masterpieces in their own right, such as the first sequence at the 'Al Ram Checkpoint', the discarded apricot stone, the lost tourist trying to find their way round Jerusalem and the neighbourly 'behaviours' of Nazareth which serve as a commentary on all the tensions of Palestine and Israel. The only things it had in common with 'Talk to Her' was another snake killing episode and hospital scene: otherwise they are worlds apart. This gets a cautious eight and a half, due to the weakness of the ninja scene in the final fifth of the film and because I don't know how funny this is across ethnic and political divides.