Cinematical

Screenwriter William Goldman once instructively quipped that the most boring screenplay imaginable would be The Village of the Happy People; drama thrives on conflict and challenge and perishes from complacency and certainty. I was thinking about that during the Un Certain Regard selection Salt of this Sea, which might as well be called The Woman who was Always Right. Written and directed by Annamarie Jacir, Salt of this Sea is the story of Soraya (Suheir Hammad), an American woman who's come to Israel from Brooklyn to see the land her Palestinian ancestors were ejected from 60 years ago. "They won't give us the 'right of return,' so I took it." They is Israel, and much of Salt of this Sea is a not-undeserved critique of Israel's past and present interactions with and policies toward Palestine. But just because a critique is legitimate doesn't mean it's artfully expressed or dramatically compelling; as Soraya travels throughout Jaffa, Ramallah, Jerusalem and other sites, she seems to have a suspiciously well-honed arsenal of aphorisms and slogans at the ready.
And it also doesn't help that she's essentially looking for a fight; she goes to her grandfather's old bank, for example, to close out his account from 60 years ago. She's informed the account's gone; she insists that the bank is still there, so she has a right to the money. The bank manager is firm, polite, and realistic: "There's really no need for stunts and dramatic stories. ..." It's advice that writer-director Jacir would have done well to take to heart. Meeting up with Emad (Saleh Bakri, who excelled as the sleepy-eyed trumpet player in The Band's Visit), a Palestinian who'd like nothing more than to leave Palestine, Soraya eventually decides to make her own kind of withdrawal to even the score -- and holds up a bank for the amount of her grandfather's account, plus interest. The crime spree becomes a whirlwind tour, with stops including Soraya's ancestral home (now occupied by an Israeli woman as clueless as she is sympathetic) and the ruins of a long-abandoned village where the two essentially play house for a while.

In many ways, Salt of this Sea is an archetypal Cannes film; extensively co-financed (I counted 17 different funding agencies in the opening credits, which is both impressive and terrifying to contemplate), sincerely principled and a little inert. Soraya's righteous fury doesn't leave much room for character or change or humanity; she's a symbol, not a person, and the film feels hollow because of that. There are gorgeous moments in Salt of this Sea -- the area's beautiful spaces and shattered rubble are both exquisitely shot -- and the few rare moments of real human behavior (the universality of a call from mom, a bank teller on the make) are good enough to make you wish there were more of them.

Jacir's film is informative and thought-provoking; at the same time, it's the sort of movie where you're not left thinking about the characters and their choices but instead left inspired to do some research and further reading. Bakri and Hammad are both charismatic actors, but comparing their character's dialogue and actions -- Barki's doubts and hesitations versus Hamad's speeches and solutions -- makes you wish that Jacir had given Hammad's character a more engaging, more full set of capacities as a character and not merely forced her to serve as an Op-Ed piece that walks. Watching Salt of this Sea, you recognize that Jacir has made her point; you also can't help but feel like she hasn't quite made a movie.