Movie Muse by Peter Oppenheimer
Flag on the school’s roof with the Palestinian Flag, which is actually outlawed by the Israeli government as being an incitement to “terrorism” and hence akin to terrorism. This puts Tamer into great conflict. On the one hand both his fascination with Maysaa’ and his natural yearning for justice for his people, prompt him to want to join their action, while on the other hand, there was the harsh and angry warn- ing from his father, “The school now is just waiting for you to make one more mistake. If that happens, you will get nothing more from me. No cash, and no more driving lessons.”
I recently watched a powerfully entertaining, energizing and challenging film released in 2022 entitled, Alam , (Arabic for “flag”). Alam is a genre-busting film that, not unlike life itself, has elements of comedy, tragedy,
romance, suspense, coming of age, thriller, morality play, and suspense, while also incorporating strong threads of politics, philosophy and, if you’re there for it, spirituality. It all adds up to a rich watch. You need not just take my word for it. At the 2022 Cairo International Film Festival, Alam won 3 major awards: Best Picture and the Audience Award, as well as Best Actor for Mamoud Bakri’s portrayal of the teenage Palestinian Israeli at its heart. Later that year Alam won Best Debut Director and Best Asian Film at the International Film Festival of Kerala in India. I use “Palestinian Israelis” to refer to Arabs, technically living within the state of Israel (formerly known as Palestine), but with a different set of amenities, rules, freedom of movement, permitted behavior, and standard of living than Jewish teenagers around them. Although calling someone a “Palestinian Israeli” is akin to referring to someone as an African American or a Chinese American, a more direct analogy is the equally painful irony of referring to today’s few survivors of America’s genocide as Native Americans. In any case, Alam opens with 4 teenage Palestinian Israeli boys in school uniforms lounging among the trees just outside of their high school campus, casually pass- ing a joint while having a half-hearted conversation about circumventing the restrictions which prevent Muslim boys from getting together with Muslim girls their age. Their attitudes reflect a certain amount of the patriarchy, sexism and misogyny in their culture (as in too many other cultures).
As the day approaches, all three available tv channels (all Israeli) ramp up their Independence Day hype with displays of military might and expressions of the great joy of their country’s founding narrative, which of course, omits any refer- ence to the tragic suffering and displacement of the 750,000 Palestinians, driven from their homes at gun point, nor the many massacres and razing into rubble of entire villages that stained the founding “independence” of the country of Israel. Tamer does attend some organizational meetings of Palestinian resistors and even accompanies Maysaa’ to a small but dramatic act of “disruption.” His father becomes furious when he finds out that his son took part in this public protest. “Are you trying to get us blackballed?” he asks Tamer. He makes Tamer promise that he will not take further part in any demonstrations. Throughout this, a very gentle and touching romance is developing between Tamer and Maysaa’, each of whom is charismatic and mysterious in their own way.
The quietest, and seemingly most self-reflective, of these four friends is Tamer, whose temperament, promptings, conditionings, social and ethical quandaries, hormones and growing sense of agency, we are to become intimate with over the course of the film and, to some extent, even come to recognize as our own. Within minutes, the four boys get caught sneaking back into school and taken to the principal’s office, where Tamer, is singled out as being in the most trouble, due previous infractions, and is warned that next up for him is expulsion. At home Tamer is moving out of his childhood bedroom and into his late grand- father’s house next door. There he sets up a bedroom in the attic, already packed with heirlooms, knickknacks, and memorabilia, which gives him (and us) a pic- ture of his childhood and family history. The next day the same friends are sitting in the back of a classroom before class has started, when there enters a strikingly beautiful new girl with whom Tamer is immediately smitten. He asks one of his friends who she is. “Her name is Maysaa’. Her brother is a martyr. She was expelled from her previ- ous school in Jerusalem. And she is currently living in her grandfather’s house, which makes her your neighbor.” This will be become one thread in Tamer’s com- ing of age odyssey, depicted in this film. The first sign of political tension at the high school is of the graffiti that appears one day at the entrance way, which reads, in Arabic, “The Day of Their Independence is the Day of our Nakba (Catastrophe).” Tamer, notices a classmate Safwat and Maysaa’ exchanging gestures and signs across the classroom and then later deep in conversation in the schoolyard. It turns out that the two of them are plotting a protest action against the upcoming school celebration of Israel’s Independence Day. They want to swap out the Israeli
Without revealing who takes part in the Independence Day flag action or how it unfurls, I will say that its execution is riddled with unexpected complications, dis- tractions, tribulations. And more. In spite of all the action, there are also quiet moments when the main characters become contemplative, and we along with them, about what is a flag ultimately. Is it only a piece of cloth with colors on it, as one character posits. And if not, what does it signify, and what are its ramifications? One character opines, “At the beginning of your liberation you raise your flag. And the highest level of libera- tion is to burn it.”
The night before and the day of Independence Day evolve into a haunting cli- max, with a creative and surprising payoff.
And more good news is you can watch Alam for free with a computer, WiFi con- nection, and a library card. Go to Kanopy.com. Register for free with a library card and have access to thousands of films to stream. You might want to make Alam, an unusually collaborative production of France, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Qatar and Palestine, your next free stream.
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