Chosen Film: “Ajami”

Much has been written of the amazing story of Ajami, but most hasn’t been that concerned with the film itself, or the poor section of Jaffa it’s named after. No, it’s the “making of” Ajami that’s captured every critic’s imagination. An Israeli and Palestinian (Yaron Shani and Scandar Copti) work together like brothers for seven long years. They cast non-professional actors whose backgrounds match those of their characters. A tiny budget was provided, in part, by German backers, and the first movie filmed in Arabic to enthrall Israelis is also the first Israeli movie to enchant Arabs. All together, the behind-the-scenes story is cinematically triumphant – proof that art can defeat prejudice, politics and history. Then, within just one minute of the opening credits, a young boy is gunned down – pow, pow, pow, pow. As his relatives start wailing, you know Ajami‘s characters, unlike their creators, won’t overcome much.

There’s Omar (Shahir Kabaha), a Palestinian teenager and the far-too-young head of his household who must pay off an impossible debt (almost 60 grand) to a Bedouin crime family. Malek (Ibrahim Frege), an even younger boy, needs almost the same for his mother’s bone marrow transplant. Three equally intense, stress-filled subplots round out the film: an Israeli policeman looking for his missing brother, a successful business owner with a rebellious daughter and a Palestinian slacker who just wants to escape it all with his Jewish girlfriend.

Omar and Malek, the desperate main characters, are taciturn boys but their expressions scream, Where will I get the money? What the fuck am I going to do? How can I get the money? (Hint: crime. And it will end badly.) It would give away too much to explain, but with a structure similar to Babel or Amores Perros, all the stories are interconnected. But unlike the loose, gossamer-thin threads Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu uses to link his characters, the thick ties that bind the people of Ajami are pulled taut. And that’s life in the Middle East, after all — everyone is wound up in everyone else’s drama.

Shot on location with a hand-held camera, the improvised scenes and a lack of music give everything a documentary-style feel. The texture of the place — dusty roads, crowded cars, slipshod housing, sad-looking mothers and chickens in the streets — surrounds you. Everyone seems pissed off and, my god, it just looks so damn hot. When the Palestinian characters approach a checkpoint, I felt my shoulders muscles squeeze. Ajami takes the viewer to this place, less comfortable than most. Maybe it’s the actors or the writing, but the realism is almost as touching, and draining, as actually being there.

Even beyond the plight of the two Palestinian kids, life in Jaffa is just rough. Friends yell, family snipes, an old man dies in a stabbing and everyone seems to be working day and night. Each conversation inevitably descends into an argument as every room fills with smoke and tension. Yes, it certainly feels like being in the Middle East. Like an Israeli cousin once told me: “It’s passionate life, but it sure will wear you out.”

“I know I can feel what is about to happen,” says Omar’s brother, the adorable Nasri (Fouad Habash), in the opening scene. And most audience members will, too. Though there are a few twists and turns, the film lets you know what’s coming. Non-linear plotting gives the plot a sense of fate — these characters, like the region itself, can’t escape this brutal destiny.

Ajami the film’s destiny, however, is much more hopeful: an Oscar for Best Foreign Language film. Its clear and gritty vision of a place everyone knows from the news contrasted with the filmmakers’s much publicized, extraordinary tale makes for an irresistible narrative. Just picture the film’s creators at the awards show: long-suffering survivors of an angry, sweaty conflict plopped into the world’s fanciest, most-beloved gala. That’s too magical a theme for Academy members to ignore. (Remember how well those Slumdog Millionaire kids did last year? Those India street urchins running up and down the red carpet in tiny tuxedos? Eight Oscars, they won.)

For those who don’t care about that great, big popularity contest, Ajami’s slice-of-Mid-East-life moments will lodge in your memory. A boy changing a tire, people working and friends arguing while tragedy slowly unfolds. Sounds ordinary, but the setting and details make it all perfectly authentic and immediate. Just the one scene of Omar’s mother crying has stayed with me. “Where were you? Where were you?” the old, veiled woman screams before breaking down in her son’s arms. Is the story of Ajami her stooped, defeated figure or the proud gold statue? Strange twist of fate for real-life success to overshadow fictional tragedy. It almost never works that way. Certainly never in Israel.

Currently in limited release, Ajami can be seen at the Film Forum and Lincoln Plaza Cinemas in New York City. For more information, visit the film’s website. The Heeb Oscar Party, hosted by comedians Eliot and Ilana Glazer, will be held at West 3rd Common on Sunday, March 7.

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What do you think?