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• Technoguy said...

  Posted on Jun 13 2009 18:54 Film is a product of cities, so is the Wall to protect cities against suicide bombers.Simone Bitone is a mixture of Arab and Jew, brought up in Morocco, educated in
  Israel and later going to live in France, where she learned to be a film-maker. She also speaks Arabic and Hebrew, English and French. Wall is a documentary
  whose opening shot in front of a Matisse-like mural stretching along one painted section of the Wall, moving onto nature-filled sections to reflect what’s on the other side. She is not seen on film but she is heard
  interviewing two young boys at play.One boy thinks
  they shoot at the Arabs from the Wall, the other thinks the Wall stops the Arabs shooting at them and her question” who is shooting at who?” goes unanswered. The boys cannot imagine what it was like before the Wall. We next see cranes picking up concrete slabs of wall(12 metres high), we also see wide vistas of
  minarets and olive groves, then we watch as the concrete blocks are dropped into place in a long shot and the beautiful horizon is blocked out. We get several slices of a set-piece interview with General
  Amos Yaron, the Minister of Defence reeling out
  facts and figures, like the Wall costing $2 million per kilometre, $1 billion altogether stretching 500-600
  kilometres between the West Bank occupied settlements and Israel to protect Israeli Jews from suicide bombers and the theft of cars and farm machinery.He seems churlish and annoyed to be
  answering the questions flanked by the Israeli flag
  on both sides. He blames the Palestinians for the Wall and says the Israelis own both sides of the Wall’s lands. The Wall is sited on either side of the Green Line-the
  1949 armistice line between Israel and the West Bank. Apart from this formal interview we do not get any real setting of context of events, reasons that led to the
  Wall’s construction e.g. the Intifada, suicide bombings, numbers of Israeli’s killed by terrorist bombs.She makes the documentary in 2003 when she heard in France
  the Israeli government announce on a newscast that this massive Wall was going to be constructed. She wanted to make the film early on before opinions had become set.The Wall is made up of stretches of
  concrete block, electronic fence , barbed wire
  and great trenches dug out for vehicles. The electronic signals will alert them when someone has climbed over to meet obstacles like barbed wire to slow them down
  prior to the soldiers picking them up. Bitone seems to wander on both sides of the Wall interviewing people who randomly come up to her and ask questions while
  she is shooting along long stretches of the Wall. She meets a young Jewish father who is concerned for his daughters’ safety when out, the Wall he thinks ineffective, would not keep attackers out. He thinks negotiation is more important and offers
  his house as the site for a peace conference. A Palestinian farmer bitterly complains that the Wall was built to appropriate Palestinian lands and will not be able to get to his fruit and olive trees, once used to
  fund his 7 daughters through college. We get no
  narrative and no interjection. People she interviews are often off camera, some do not want to be seen through
  fear of Hamas taking revenge. Most of the construction workers are Palestinians who need to earn a living and aren’t bothered about building their own prison walls.
  One comes from Iraq and would like to return after Saddam Hussein as life is better there. A Jew expresses sorrow at the loss of his Arab neighbours and would like to develop projects so they can meet. One senses which
  side Bitone is on. Her idea is that the divisions between Arab and Jew are a division in herself. This gives rise to unreality as people get cut off from each other. However if we were to witness the effects of a suicide
  bombing we’d realize why 84% of Israelis approve of the Wall’s construction. Suicide bombings reduced from 2000 to 3 in one year. Which proves it has been
  useful as a temporary solution. She interviews an eloquent Jewish settler, Shuli Dichter, says it’s madness that his parents who came from the walled ghetto of Lodtz, now face closure and enclosure. The Israelis he says have’ lost their minds’: they care for Israel so much their land is walled in as it was in the ghetto.
  He does not despair he says because he is still able to speak as he drives along the Wall. Whenever stretches of Wall are shown mournful Arabic music is played. Towards the end, Bitone presents footage of people jumping over certain stretches of the Wall, talking to some of them. I felt she could have concentrated here on some of these individuals, giving the story of their daily lives. An editor could have cut the film, which has periods of shooting monotonous stretches in wordless silence. She films the nervous young checkpoint guard
  She films the nervous checkpoint guard inspecting people’s IDs and informs them if they are not in file, reprimanding Israelis for coming and to go back.
  The extras have her interviews with two Palestinian directors worth viewing. More information should have been included, even maps, locations of which part of the Wall we were on, and more focus on events leading to the Wall and people’s lives.

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