It Must Be Heaven

Director Elia Suleiman

IT MUST BE HEAVEN                    B                    

Palestine  France  Qatar  Germany  Canada  Turkey  (97 mi)  2019 d:  Elia Suleiman

“There will be a Palestine.  Absolutely.” Then taking a second look at the cards, “Wait; hold on ...”

―Elia Suleiman receiving a tarot reading

A celebration of all things Palestinian, as viewed through the Keatonesque deadpan humor of Elia Suleiman, who places himself front and center as an innocent bystander, always wearing his signature scarf and hat, writing a series of sight gags that take him from his comic interactions with neighbors to Paris and New York, always feeling out of place, not exactly welcomed wherever he goes, viewed as the odd man out, but the power of observation comprise the film’s central premise.  Receiving a Special Mention award at Cannes, Suleiman provides the eyes and ears of the film, where his curiosity knows no bounds, remaining wordless throughout except when a cab driver asks where he’s from, responding “Nazareth.”  “Is that really a country?” the cab driver asks.  “I am Palestinian,” he finally reveals, which generates a howl of approval from the cab driver, immediately calling a friend claiming he’s got a Palestinian in his cab, just like Jesus of Nazareth.  Not nearly as developed as his previous efforts, with DIVINE INTERVENTION (2002) being the stand-out, Suleiman works in ironic absurdity, stringing together variations upon a theme, not really telling a story, instead offering commentary on how he sees the world around him, using long takes and a static camera.  The most recurring sequence involves Suleiman staring over his balcony, never knowing what to expect, initially catching his neighbor stealing lemons from his enormous lemon tree, while other times he’s either pruning or watering them, making sure that includes a new young tree that he’s recently planted, where these scenes mirror other sequences where he can be seen driving his car through dusty roadways before he can be found in an enormous orchard, where through the trees he can see a mysterious woman carrying empty water crates on her head, like an illusory mirage, never approaching her, always viewing her from a distance.  In another he listens to an elderly neighbor tell humorous stories, later discovering that same neighbor out in the rain, as if lost, unable to recall where he really lives, perhaps suffering from signs of dementia, with Suleiman sharing his umbrella as he kindly walks him back to his own home. 

His first film in ten yearas, which is basically a series of vignettes strung together, some scenes offer a different kind of commentary, with Suleiman finding himself in a Middle East restaurant that suddenly turns into a Wild West stand-off, with two thug-like brothers who look more like bodyguards, each sipping Johnny Walker straight, quickly confronting the owner, wondering what he’s feeding their sister who sits quietly munching away between them, with the owner acknowledging he cooks with wine.  Is he trying to get their sister drunk?  The owner admits the drunken party would have to be the chicken, who was thoroughly doused in preparation, but the alcohol cooks out in the cooking process, later apologizing, admitting he should have told them the ingredients ahead of time, bringing the brothers a complimentary bottle of Johnny Walker.  This kind of old-world paternalism, with brothers in the role of enforcers, mixes with the age-old practice of barter and exchange, suggesting all things can be worked out by offering the right incentives.  Adding to the comic absurdity, two cops are harassing a tourist, who is apparently minding his own business, yet the cops won’t leave him alone, even as another man is seen urinating in public, then smashing a beer bottle against a wall, but it’s the tourist who’s the public nuisance.  In another, an angry mob armed with sticks is racing up the street towards Suleiman, apparently ready to bust him up, but they run right past him, taking it out on some otherwise nameless target, giving viewers some idea what it’s like living in an area where the threat of violence is always a distinct possibility.  Similarly, a car races by Suleiman on the highway, with two uniformed soldiers sitting side-by-side in the front seat, with both exchanging sunglasses, retaining the exact same look, but as the camera pulls back, a blindfolded passenger can be seen in the back seat, which isn’t exactly funny, but it’s a disturbing image that’s likely quite common in this part of the world. 

As if seeking a better place to call home, Suleiman travels to Paris, seen sitting at an outdoor café, as pedestrians walk in slow-motion, where women are transformed into chic fashion models, each one strutting down the street, as if this is the city of dreams.  Yet just as strangely, on a mysteriously empty street, Suleiman watches as a line of tanks passes by, an ominous omen in an otherwise peaceful setting, which is mirrored by scenes of cops in formation, doing dazzling dance moves in unison on roller skates, scooters, Segways, or motorcycles, where they literally do tricks before our eyes in a dazzling display of unified choreography.  Perhaps the best expression of France, however, are emergency vehicles arriving to aid the homeless on the street, delivering gourmet meals in stylish exaggeration, treating him like a regular customer, where he has a variety of options to choose from, including choice deserts.  Things are a bit different when he travels to New York City, walking into a supermarket where each of the customers is armed with automatic weapons, bazookas, and assault rifles slung over their shoulders, even as they’re toting babies around, which continues when he gets outside, as everyone is armed to the teeth. Nothing says America, apparently, to the outside world, like an assault weapon.  But it’s also here that Suleiman runs into his friend, actor Gael García Bernal, who is in town to promote a new film idea, sitting in an enormous open-spaced ground floor room with wall-to-wall windows, waiting to meet with a producer as Suleiman tags along.  The high powered producer turns out to be Nancy Grant, Xavier Dolan’s producer, with García introducing Suleiman, claiming he has his own film, a comedy about peace in the Middle East, to which she replies, “That sounds funny already,” ignoring him completely while warmly embracing García, leading him away for a power lunch to discuss his project, while the receptionist asks the suddenly alone Suleiman if he’ll be needing a cab.  An odd  sequence in Central Park finds a collection of police cars arriving to chase a woman dressed in a Palestinian flag painted onto her body while wearing angel’s wings, obviously viewed as an international threat, becoming a comic scene of misdirection, with bungling cops misfiring, misjudging, and just too incompetent to really give her much of a chase, though once they close in on her she simply disappears into thin air, as if she never existed in the first place, leaving only her wings behind, like the remains of what’s left of the dream.  Ending in a celebratory mode in a Palestinean nightclub with youthful dancers enjoying themselves, as if thrilled to be alive, this is a lighthearted and easily digestible comedy about darker subjects and situations, where the satiric tone is mischievous and whimsical, but always a delight.  

The Strange Little Cat (Das merkwürdige Kätzchen)

THE STRANGE LITTLE CAT (Das merkwürdige Kätzchen)       B      

Germany  (72 mi)  2014  d:  Ramon Zürcher       The Strange Little Cat - KimStim

The film is little more than a day in the life of a Berlin family, meticulously observed with pinpoint accuracy, but what first-time director Ramon Zürcher offers is a radical perspective on ordinary events, where the film is peppered with oddly juxtaposed connections, where even the most banal events are continually seen as slightly askew, where instead of a harmony so perfectly expressed in the brilliant opening shot of Béla Tarr’s WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES (2000), Werckmeister Harmonies - YouTube (10:56), where drunken bar patrons become moons and spinning planets revolving around the sun, Zürcher’s universe is continually seen spinning out of balance with a rhythm of disorder, becoming an absurd comedy of errors.  Supposedly conceived at a seminar conducted by retired Hungarian director Béla Tarr, the idea draws upon Kafka’s 1915 novella The Metamorphosis, where a common, ordinary experience turns into an out of whack, surreal fantasy, where realistic events are given an often dream-like quality, but no explanation is ever offered for this most peculiar take on what is otherwise perceived as the mundane and the routine.  A minimalist economy of means at only seventy-two minutes, written, directed, edited, and produced by Zürcher, while also providing the sound editing and digital effects himself, the director brings a formal precision to confined space, as the claustrophobic camera offers a fixed position inside a cramped family apartment, placing the viewer in the center of the action as people slide around each other as they move throughout the kitchen in a flurry of activity while fixing themselves something to eat.  While the stoic mother (Jenny Schily) continually reminds her precocious daughter Clara (Mia Kasalo) to keep quiet as grandmother is still asleep, since Clara has a habit of screaming at the top of her lungs when the garbage disposal is running, it is nonetheless the mother that turns on every conceivable modern electrical appliance in the kitchen while grinding and roasting individual cups of coffee, squeezing fresh juice out of oranges, disposing of the garbage and preparing food, each one drowning out the conversation with the most disruptive and annoying noise that seems to come in the most inconceivable moments.  Equally strange is an early morning visit to fix a washing machine, where a dizzying routine of constant movement is established with people entering and exiting the frame, all jostling for position, with the camera centered upon their waists, often cutting off their heads, becoming a choreography of moving bodies not only coming in and out of the room, but in and out of the front door of the apartment. 

Initially the flurry of activity, including a mischievous cat being chased by a much bigger dog, is amusingly off-kilter, where there’s seemingly no rhyme or reason for what’s happening, becoming a strange jumble of chaos that accentuates sight gags and physical comedy, where the film is largely a collection of small moments that grow more absurd with often incomprehensible mutterings from each of the characters, establishing weird personalities, where by the end, human activity is seen as a fishbowl style madhouse where only the cat, with an air of indifference and lack of concern seems the most sane creature in the household.   The non-narrative, unpredictability factor gives this the rigorous form and outlandish style of an experimental film in keeping with the director’s Berlin School (films) mentors at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin (Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin), where Zürcher, born in Switzerland, has been a student since 2006.  Led by directors including Christian Petzold’s Yella (2007), Jerichow (2008), Barbara (2012) and Beats Being Dead (Dreileben 1 - Etwas Besseres als den Tod) (2012), Thomas Arslan, Angela Schanelec, Christoph Hochhäusler’s One Minute of Darkness (Dreileben 3 – Eine Minute Dunkel) (2012), Ulrich Köhler, Benjamin Heisenberg’s THE ROBBER (2010), Valeska Grisebach’s BE MY STAR (2001) and LONGING (2006), and Maren Ade’s THE FOREST FOR THE TREES (2003) and 2010 Top Ten Films of the Year: #9 Everyone Else (Alle Anderen) (2009), their films tend to lack mainstream accessibility, where according to German director Oskar Roehler, “They are always slow, always depressing, nothing is ever really said in them (though) they are always well thought of.”  The fall of the Berlin Wall in late 1989 triggered a collapse not only of political institutions, but many elements of cultural identity, particularly in the former East Germany which simply disappeared overnight, where Berlin became the cultural epicenter of new progressive measures, where in the mid 1990’s, graduates of the German Film and Television Academy emerged with a new aesthetically-driven form of cinema.  Abandoning the historical context embraced by most commercially popular German films at the time, films of the Berlin School tend to deal with life in the here and now, refraining from delving into Germany’s dark past, except through ambiguous means.  According to Marco Abel from his 2008 article in Cineaste, Intensifying Life: The Cinema of the “Berlin School”, elaborated upon further in his 2013 book, The Counter-Cinema of the Berlin School (Screen Cultures: German Film and the Visual), this: 

“counter-cinema is built around the unusual style of realism employed in the films of this movement, a realism that presents audiences with images of a Germany that does not yet exist.  It is precisely how these films’ images and sounds work that renders them political.  They are political not because they are message-driven films but because they are made politically, thus performing a ‘redistribution of the sensible’ — a direct artistic intervention in the way politics partitions ways of doing and making, saying and seeing.”  

According to David Pendleton, programmer of the Harvard Film Archive, 

“In contrast with the markedly affective style of the New German cinema (of the 70’s) — Fassbinder’s melodramas, Herzog’s eccentricity, Wenders’ melancholy — these directors (of the 90’s) exhibit a striking coolness, at least on the surface.  In the absence of being told how to feel, the spectator is urged to confront his or her own involvement.”  

Zürcher himself has described this film as “a horror film without horror,” as the unique camera angles and protracted use of offscreen sound helps create confusion and disorientation, using alternative methods, among which include whimsical fantasy to help provide a look at a nation that longs for a better future but still hasn't found itself, like it’s still stuck in a labyrinthian puzzle with no exit plan.  Unlike the formal rigor of recent German films examining a crisis of faith, Katrin Gebbe’s Nothing Bad Can Happen (Tore Tantz) (2013), punk fascism disguised as religious parable, or Dietrich Brüggemann’s Stations of the Cross (Kreuzweg) (2014), an unwavering doctrine of religious fear and absolutism, Zürcher’s more mischievous film is perhaps closer to the zany universe embellished in Giorgos Lanthimos’s acclaimed DOGTOOTH (2009), where the off-the-wall absurdity is a world unto itself, punctuated by the musical theme of “Pulchritude,” Pulchritude By Thee More Shallows - YouTube (2:36), a hypnotic yet semi-agitated string piece from the San Francisco post-rock experimental indie group Thee More Shallows, whose constantly recurring ballet-like motif resembles the pulsating roar of a surging locomotive engine as it accelerates down the tracks.  Over time, the eccentricities of the characters are exposed, making strange remarks, concocting mysterious tales, offering weird commentary, all of which has an aura of randomness about it, creating a spontaneous feel.  But despite the quirky imagination at play, where you get the feeling something is always lurking just outside the frame, the question is does it add up to more than the sum of its parts?  Perhaps the key is staring at that tired, worn-out face of the mother, like a world-weary Kaurismäki character, whose depressive gaze tells all, or perhaps it’s the pint-sized view as seen through the clever imagination of young Clara, still too young and magical to matter all that much or to be taken seriously by the collection of droll adults in the room, often completely ignored while discovering things all on her own, much like the sleepy dreams and free-spirited rhythms of the cat, who romps around the house when she pleases, yet sees and ignores everything.