About the Failure of Taking Stances

When I watched Munich, I was sure that this is the 'best' you can get in terms of creating an artistic reality which is so edulcorated and 'politically correct' that it completely distorts the artistic value of the movie. When you approach a political topic, or a topic with a high political implication, from a literary and visual standpoint, it's obvious that taking stances is important. Based on research the film director or author must take a certain position. I know there are some very early Marxist or neo-Marxist writings that are still hidden in a private corner of my head, but I think it is impossible to create something valuable artistically when you just want to present in a very easy going way very complex historical facts. 

I've heard first about 7 Days in Entebbe one year ago, when it was presented to the 68. edition of the Berlinale. I wanted to watch it but I've read some reviews that were not favorable and needed some time to completely detach myself from them and evaluate the movie with my own mind. Finally tonight I took the chance for keeping myself busy for over 1h watching it on Netflix.

The movie covers the 7 days in the life of the passengers of the AirFrance Flight from Athens to Tel Aviv, hijacked at the end of June 1976 in a joint operation of representatives of the German terrorist organisation Baader Meinhof and terrorists of the Organisation for the Liberation of Palestine. The two organisations had a quite good collaboration at the time, with Baader Meinhof members permanently training in the OELP camps in the Middle East. They were trained to attack and perpetrate acts of terror very often for a Palestininan cause, not to plant flowers or collect money for sick children.

There are two Germans (Wilfried Böse, played by Daniel Brühl, and Brigitte Kuhlmann, played by Rosamund Pike) looking to add a sense to their life, naive, intellectuals aiming to put into practice their theoretical revolutionary talks. There are Palestinians looking for revenge and not trusting the Germans - because, the movie says because of them Jews come to 'Palestine' and started to 'oppress them, doing what the Germans did' (very deep). When the intellectual level is so high, the fact that over 200 peoplewere kidnapped and brought to Uganda - not the 'eretz Uganda' of the Zionist Congress, but the Uganda of Idi Amin. 

In Israel, Shimon Peres and Yitzak Rabin, later portrayed as active supporters of the dialogue with the Palestinians, as it was necessarily a direct connection to the Entebbe case, are rather keen to send dozen of Israeli military to rescue the hostages, regardless of the risks, than to give up to the requests of Palestinians. Yoni Netanyahu's death is somehow the cause of Bibi's entry into politics - most likely not. 

The film avoids violence, which is inherent to such a situation, avoids taking stances, avoids clarity for ambiguity because you better avoid being so direct with your thoughts, in the end, maybe you are not right. Carlos the Jackal was also portrayed - according to a very long and boring movie - a kind of Robin Hood, a revolutionary misunderstood by its times. 

The only moments who are really dramatic and worth watching are the dance insertions admirably played by the dancers of Batsheva Dance Company.

My life didn't change for good or for worse after watching 7 Days in Entebbe. I don't like art with a thesis, as I don't like obsessive neutrality. If you are smart enough - and also not a real sympathizer to a cause but trying to hide it - you can create an interesting moral case and push the public to further thinking. If not, you just avoid anything and assume that wars are done for candies. Peace and love for the revolution!

My movie selection

I had the time last night to watch a couple of interesting - but different - long and short movies.

In this order:

Lost in Tel Aviv is a sour-sweet animation movie about a couple of young graficians living in Tel Aviv, looking to promote their Guystershow movie, against all and everything: from the hectic taxi drivers in Tel Aviv, the changing mood of the financial system, the pressure of the family, the daily accidents and everything spontaneous occuring into your life. I felt everything as very human and simple. Sometimes our life is a cartoon, because of the simplicity of its complicated ways.

My favorite of the evening/day/week was Elyokim, a short story about love, friendship and betrayal in Mea Sharim and the unfairness of the limits of our dreams.

Willingly is another short movie. The topic: the divorce as the priviledge of the man, who can play with this right, use it as a way of psychological pressure against the woman. Sometimes might be too late, or sometimes - as in the case of this movie - it is just the beginning of the woman's awakening. Interesting exploration of the divorce procedures, but also an interesting soul lecture.

The silent savior

Remembering Wilfried Israel.

More important than being a hero is to do good and let a good trace by influencing the life of the others.

The Infidel: what if...?

Today I am in the mood to write about movies I watched in the last couple of days. And for this one, I spent almost 2 hours looking for a best variant, without getting block every two seconds. When you really want to see something NOW, quality is not at all what you'll get. But, anyway, I didn't regret.

The Infidel is presenting a case I encountered a couple of times, but with people belonging to a different belief. A moderate/not exclusively observant Muslim, Mahmud Nasir, is discovering while ordering the papers of its dead mother that he was adopted from a Jewish family. Opposite the house of his mother lives an American Jew he just had a conflict with, without knowing he is Jewish but understandable for him after seeing the Menorah at his window. At the end, he will become his best supporter in the unsuccessful journey to meet his family. His father will die the meeting is taking place, in a Jewish retirement and elderly care, not being allowed to see him by a strict "shomrim".

The discovery of his Jewish identity - the story about the identity is not extremely clear, as it is not either why the parents got to give him for adoption, as long as they were still living in the neighborhood -, in his late forties, with a son about to marry the daughter of an extremist cleric in London, is troubling completely his family, social and personal life and relations. To testify in the front of the public eyes - who don't have any doubt about the beginning of his double life - he is still a good Muslim, he is taking crazy steps, surprising even the most vocal radicals. And some of the events are laughable: while attending a Islamic gathering, before going with his Jewish friend to a bar mitzvah (the attendance was prepared lengthily, by infusing him a bunch of stereotypes about how to stereotypically be, behave and talk) - the kippa under the Muslim headwear - the first headwear fell down and the kippa is shinning in the sun. Desperately, he lit the kippa and jump on it several times, an episode carefully registered on camera. After, he run to attend the bar mitzvah. The next day, after his image was aired over and over again, a spontaneous protest is organized in the front of his house, while hosting the "precious" presence of the cleric for setting up the last details of the wedding. Shortly after he answered the question about the "clean" Muslim genealogy, faced with the protests and about to be hold by the police, he shout "I am Jewish". And, the family disaster follow up: the cleric cancel any contact and the wedding is drop out, the angry family leave him. But...this is not the end: after some research on the Internet, he reached the conclusion that, in fact, the cleric is a former pop singer, disappeared mysteriously a couple of years ago, and who, in fact, was a former Scientologist.

This is a happy ending: a Pakistani-Indian style wedding, enjoyed by all.

Can't stop laughing and laughing and laughing.

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The West Bank story

This short movie won the 2006 Academy Award for the Best Live Action Short Movie. The action is entertaining, lots of easy references to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (should I put a link here, with explanations what it is this play about, will not) and to the West Side Story in a sometimes Bollywood mood as embroiding the very contemporary story of the Palestinians and Israelis.

Kosher King versus Hummus (to be pronounced also Hamas) Hut, fighting their own side of the screen and, eventually, putting their houses on fire. The fire is spreading despite the Israeli ""Jews in construction" project, of building a separation wall between the two family business.

How are they connected, though, despite the deep rejection of each other's existence - hence the wall, to obstruct the view of their existence: L-O-V-E. Between an Israeli soldier belonging to the Kosher King and a Palestinian girl working at and belonging to the Hummus Hut. At the end of the short movie, they plan to go togther in Beverly Hills, apparently the only place where the members of the two communities can live unproblematically side by side.

Did I like something about this movie? This very crazy idea that love is the answer and not any kind of love, but an extreme one.

What I didn't? The plot is too simple to be true or likely to be believed, mostly when both love at the same crazy extent hummus and falafel.

Inside the mind of a self hating mind

Image via Wikipedia

Inside a Skinhead/The Believer, is the last movie I've watched in 2010, the curious, but not completely unique story of a self-hating Jew, based on the true story of Daniel Burros, member of the American Nazi Party. In comparison with the real story, the movie introduced a couple of smooth nuances: as, for example, the remords, the doubts about offending the holy symbols of Judaism (as for example, destroying the scrolls of Torah), the possibility of a coming back, the permanence of its Jewish roots that cannot be denied without deniying its own self. And also, some scattered remarks about the need to separate Zionism of Judaism.

Perhaps, it was a tentative image of a portrait of some tendencies within the American Jewry post-Shoah?

You can have many thoughts unless you don't read the bio of the real character, who was suffering of various mental instabilities and at least a double/and troubled/ personality. A psychiatric inquiry inside the mind of this Daniel Burros might be more useful and rich in trying to understand such cases, on a very scientific basis.

The Schakal

I avoided for a long time to see the movie about the terrorist Carlos. At any price, I didn't want to give any single cent for going into the theatre for such shame. I had the occasion to see it with some friends, the "short" 3-hour version - the longer is 5, but I thought it is already enough.

The image of the "guy": A rebel "Che Guevara" of terrorism, facing big bosses of crime in the Middle East, being joined by a bunch of "rebels without a cause" from all over the Cold War world. Without mercy with its enemies and impatiently changing women whose revolutionary role he cannot trust. A narcissist enjoying good food, drinks and to admire his body naked in the mirror of the expensive hotel rooms where he prepared his attacks. Traded by those who hosted him, for cheap "geostrategical reasons". It's the apology of his normality, the normality of nothing more than a paid killer. And this is why I disliked it, as much as I dislike the T-shirts with Che Guevara.

Lourdes/Movies to do not watch if something else to do

I spent 90 minutes of my unique life this afternoon watching Lourdes. For the sake of the words, I would like once in my life to visit this place to describe and study on the spot various (surely) unique phenomenon. But I will prefer a journalistic approach to a hymn to irrationality. Otherwise, the industry of holy stones and abuse of innocence and lack of culture are, beside a source of income, an example projected as worthy to be followed. Irrationality is like a pandemia and you don't need movies pretending to be neutral. You need to know the meaning of the words and to take seriously your role as an intellectual. Otherwise, there will be people to believe that multiple sclerosis might be cured (miraculously) by prayers and only prayers.

Let's punk

Israeli's punk stage is a reflection of the daily confrontations and differences of the society itself. Religious or secular, keen to enter the Army or oposing it, worring about the future or unsatisfied with the mentalities of their societies. The movie it is well documented and interesting, but I would regret the lack of connection between the current musical punk stage and the Israeli musical trends from the 60s-70s.

"Whisky"!

And smile. The picture is ready. But who are the characters of the picture? What is the relation between them? I was extremely impressed by the inertia of the protagonists of this Uruguayan movie I was tempted to see at least twice in the last five years, but never had the proper incentive to do so.

I had several times during watching the temptation to behave as people might behave at a soccer game: go, do it, or at least do something, it is about time. It is about failed human relationships before starting to be relationships. And you don't know what is the reason of this opacity: you say "whisky", you smile, the picture is ready, that's all. A situation I encountered many times with people unable to express nothing themselves out of a routine - including one of feelings/or rather lack of - they were accepting being unable to behave socially.

The references to a local Jewish life are very discrete and could passed unobserved: the two brothers meet again on the occasion of the mazewa ceremony and there at least once a menorah is appearing in the images describing the house interior.

Absent checking points

In the last six months I saw more or less recent Israeli movies, but very often, because of various time contraints I was unable to dedicate time to anything but watching. I am still optimistic about the possibility to succeed in writing at least a couple of lines about each of them.

And I will start with the freshest one, Yoav Shamir's Checkpoint. I liked from the very beginning the idea: filming - between 2001 and 2003 - at various checkpoints in Israel could offer various sociological, human, historical opportunities. Anyway, the category of the film is "documentary". And I was expecting at least some background information about the situation from the ground, some other aspects helping a viewer living outside the area to understand the context: why do you need controls, why the curfew in Jenin was introduced, why the rules were changing from an hour to another. Or why, for example, you need to control carefully children - in order to do not blow themselves up because they parents or relatives wanted to used them for various political reasons. The "documentary" is failing to explain this. And, instead, it is offering the image the Western viewer expect to see: "poor" Palestinians, aggressed by sometimes brutal youngsters with guns.

Now, I have to think about a recent problem: how much art is misusing and manipulating reality mostly in tensed political contexts? Yes, I know the benefactory influence as a soft power. I want to learn more about the bad side of the story.

The mysterious Hebrew letters

I must recognize my ignorance and limited understanding of the current "cultural trends" but for me, Guy Ritchie is not a reference. I watched Snatch, and haven't laugh at all. Matter of humour. And, maybe I was more interested in his family/love story with Madonna.

Accidentally, I went recently to see Sherlock Holmes, his latest achievement. London under the threat of a terrible conspiracy, is saved, of course, by Sherlock Holmes. The stories of Conan Doyle, a bit too soft for our daily culture faced every minute with reports about various kind of petty or big criminality are put in an apocaliptic scenario, more "cool" for the nowadays "sensibility". A big success probably among the fans of various apocalyptic sceneries.

In-between various fights and plots, my attention was attracted by the presence of the Hebrew alike letters in various rituals introduced in the movie as part of the dangerous conspiracy aiming to conquer the world. The "Jewish" element is appearing as well in Snatch, where the thieves are dressed as Hassidic Jews from Antwerp, one of the most important centers of the diamonds' industry. Almost neutral presence. But, in the case of Sherlock Holmes, the Hebrew/Jewish aspect is associated with the "evil", the "conspiracy", the "hunger for power". Sounds familiar, isn't it?

Rouge

I've read for the first time about the movie Red Sorghum in some old reviews in the French media from the end of the 80s. The expression of a long time cultural and - as it was the case in the 60s - political as well fascination on the axis Paris-Peking/Beijing. The narrative have to do with some political symbols - the life of a young woman - from the Chinese Eastern province of Shandong, during the second Sino-Japanese war. The story is narrated from the point of view of the protagonist's grandson.

Since I've read about by now I really wanted to see this movie. I was not able to think about images, and was focused only on the story in itself. Now, after I saw it I could say that I was extremely impressed about the power of the images, but found the narrative completely irrelevant. Sometimes even ridiculous - like, for example, when the Chinese peasants are attacking the Japanese trucks with homemade wine "grenades". The cruelty of the scenes describing the confrontation between the Japanese military and the Chinese peasants is testimony - beyond of some realities of the time - not only of the Cold War, but of the old, present and future rivalries from the Asian continent.

But, again, the images. Long focus on the windy sorghum fields. The close-ups of the red wine poured into cups. The red sky with, again, the leaves of sorghum in the wind. Only to have these images, and it was enough to make a movie out of it. And, just realized another French-Chinese connection: between the force of these natural images on the run and the description of nature from Sartre's La Nausée.

The end of the cinema as we all know

Coppola's predictions.

Dynamics

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, about his film sketch Dynamics of a Metropolis

My aim was to produce an effect by its own action, its own tempo and rhythm, instead of the still fashionable plots that force cinema to ape literature or theater.

Survival is the Sweetest Revenge

Forward

Rich Cohen

September 9

When I was 10, my father recommended a movie called “Where Eagles Dare,” the story of a few Allied soldiers who go behind enemy lines during World War II and wreak incredible havoc. When I asked if it was any good, my father just gave me a look. “Four guys kill like a thousand Nazis,” he said. “It’s one of the best movies ever made.”
In those years, my father, judging war films, used a Nazi-to-American kill ratio: If a lot of Nazis died, the movie was good; if those Nazis were killed by just a few Americans, the movie was potentially great.
This second criterion had everything to do with the fact that we were Jews, therefore members of a community small in number but gaudy in incident. In this way, the commandos in the Hollywood epic — I’m thinking of “The Dirty Dozen,” among others — were a stand-in for Jews as a whole. A few of us killing a lot of them — it’s a satisfying fantasy.
I’ve thought a lot about this since the release of “Inglourious Basterds,” the revenge fantasy we’ve been working toward for the last half-century. Like all masterpieces, Quentin Tarantino’s movie shows where and why other artistic expressions of this fantasy — some being very good novels and films — have failed: Simply put, they were not crazy enough, nor wild enough, nor did they go far enough.
Movies like Ed Zwick’s “Defiance,” which chronicles the exploits of Jewish partisans in occupied Poland, are crippled by their adherence to the real-life particulars of the Second World War. From the moment such a film starts, you know how the bigger story will end: The ghettos will fill and empty, the box cars will rattle down the track, the chimneys will send up plumes of black smoke. No matter how you subtract the numbers, you always wind up with the same answer: six million.
“Inglourious Basterds” succeeds as fantasy because Tarantino, who does not know better, broke every rule. (The funky spelling in the title is a warning of coming trespass.) The plot unfolds with a pleasant sense of shock — you keep expecting him to swing back and rejoin the historical narrative, but he instead keeps on, past every decency, into the black book itself, where he re-writes the most terrible moments of history, culminating in the ultimate money shot: a big, heavily armed Jew, a mountain Jew, the big Yid of yore, standing over the Führer, raking his face with machine-gun fire.
Off the charts on the Herb Cohen Nazi-to-American kill ratio, the greatest scene ever filmed, the meaning of Hollywood, why Jack Warner quit Youngstown and moved out West, though he never knew this himself.
Like all good fantasies, it works because the real world remains visible — the dream diverges, but not entirely. Simply put, there were Jews not very unlike the Jews in the movie. I wrote about a group of them in my 2000 book “The Avengers,” the story of the poet-partisan Abba Kovner, who, in the last days of the Second World War, trained a unit of Jewish partisans to kill as many Germans as possible. Plan A, which fortunately failed, was to poison the water system of a German city. Plan B was to poison the bread served daily to members of the Nazi SS being held in a prison camp awaiting prosecution for war crimes. Hundreds were hospitalized as a result, though none died.
The Inglourious Basterds are the fantasy; the Avengers were the reality. Here’s what they had in common: Both wanted to kill Nazis, both were unshaven and ragged, both were wholly unbelievable and thus often not believed in.
More interesting are the points of difference, for therein lies the answer to a great mystery: How do you continue on after the world has fallen?
For starters, Kovner did not want to hunt and kill Nazis one by one. The war had made him crazy, and in his crazed, war-ravaged mind, he believed Germans were not entitled to individualized deaths — I see you, you see me, you beg for your life, I shoot you, then you die. He believed Germans should instead be killed at random, en masse, from an emotional remove, as Germans had done to Jews.
What’s more, in its Hollywood incarnations, Jewish revenge is carried out or enabled by a righteous goy. In Tarantino’s case, this is Aldo Raine, the American lieutenant brilliantly played by Brad Pitt. But Kovner believed Jews, led by Jews and leading Jews, must take their own revenge, must carry out the retribution that God Himself, were there a God (Kovner became an atheist in the war), would have carried out. It was a point of revenge — not merely to punish the Germans but to rehabilitate the Hebrews. The Avengers would kill their way back to life, in the process leaving a marker for future generations: This is what happens if you…
“Better to die as free men fighting” — that’s how Kovner put it at the start of the war. By the end, he might as well have said: Better to kill as dead men living.
Following the war, Kovner returned slowly to life, accepting that the world had not ended and history would go on. In these months, he did something so miraculous it’s never been caught on film. He changed. He grew. He did not give up revenge so much as alter it’s meaning. He never publicly spoke of plans A and B. For him, victory would be measured not by the death of Germans but by the existence of Jews. Survival is the best answer to annihilation. As Kovner himself said, “Every Jewish town that thrives in Israel, every child that is raised, every tree that is planted — that is our revenge.”
Or, as Herb Cohen put it, “I’m here, watching a movie. Where the hell are the Nazis?”

Rich Cohen is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone. He is the author of several books, including “The Avengers: A Jewish War Story” (Knopf, 2000) and, most recently, “Israel Is Real: An Obsessive Quest to Understand the Jewish Nation and Its History” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux).

About Abba Kovner - http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Kovner.html

What you could do from inside a tank?

Shooting a movie. About Lebanon.

How to fit a city in a story. Or to fail to.

I must recognize I was thinking a bit at least twice before deciding to write about this book. No, it was not very difficult or the book too complex to describe. By far. Christiane Wirtz's Ein Jahr in Tel Aviv/One Year in Tel Aviv, is a memoir of a German Christian woman in her 30s deciding to take a year off in Tel Aviv, learning Hebrew, finally finding an Israeli boyfriends, scattering references to the life on the beach, eagerness to see the Bethleem for Christmas, one mention of JDate, relations between Germany and the state of Israel, coffee(s), not-so-tensed-life-as-we-see-on-tv etc. Often I had the impression that it is about recollecting some disparate memories put in a certain narrative form. And usually, memory is a traitor and if your memories are not discerned through a critical viewpoint you risk to be stereotypical, as your first stop in the rememoration process would be exactly what it is common to various representations.

Maybe it was intended to advertise Tel Aviv, celebrating this year 100th anniversary. Possibly, as in Germany the book was distributed with a small stamp marking this event, but it is hardly difficult to find too much about the city, as a potential tourist or individual interested about this city, in general. People are drinking coffees all over the world, or going to cut their hair or men are flirting with single women.

As usual, there are good and bad stories, good and bad writers. A city means memories, understanding of places, interacting with people, catching the whole landscape. After, selecting what it is interesting, attractive, unique. It is available for any kind of "city" stories, as each have its special history. When it is about books, you should be able to stimulate the imagination, to describe by your words images. Not the strong point of this book.

I rediscovered Tel Aviv, through the Flying Camel, a 1994 movie of Rami Na'aman. With not a very smart and sophisticated story, but simple, even absurde, and with structured visual information about the city, mostly about the Bauhaus buildings. And, of course, not forget about the statue of the flying camel - the symbol of the Tel Aviv of the pre-State of Israel, which a Jewish European-Israeli professor and a Jewish Palestinian sanitation worker, try to restore.

The story of the camel is shortly the following. In 1932, after the first international fair was inaugurated in Tel Aviv, it was annouced the designation of the Northern part of the city as a permanent fairground, the Levant Fair. Before this decision was took, the mayor of Yafo derided his Jewish colleagues who were dreaming about a fair, "encouraging" them that this will be established when the camel will grow wings. As the fair was established, the symbol of the Levant Fair was chosed the Flying Camel.

Lars von Trier film "Antichrist" shocks Cannes

Mike Collett-White
Reuters

May 17

Danish director Lars von Trier elicited derisive laughter, gasps of disbelief, a smattering of applause and loud boos on Sunday as the credits rolled on his drama "Antichrist" at the Cannes film festival.

The film, starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as a couple seeking to overcome the grief of losing their only child, has quickly become the most talked-about at this year's festival, which ends on May 24.

Cannes' notoriously picky critics and press often react audibly to films during screenings, but Sunday evening's viewing was unusually demonstrative.

Jeers and laughter broke out during scenes ranging from a talking fox to graphically-portrayed sexual mutilation.

Many viewers in the large Debussy cinema also appeared to take objection to von Trier's decision to dedicate his film to the revered Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky. Applause from a handful of viewers was drowned out by booing at the end.

Antichrist opens with a heavily stylized, black-and-white, slow-motion portrayal of the child's accidental death set to soaring music by Handel.

Dafoe's character, who is a therapist, tries to help his wife deal with her grief and encourages her to come off heavy medication that sedates her for weeks after the death.

They decide to go to an isolated wooden cabin in an unspecified forest to recover, but the woman Gainsbourg portrays loses control of her senses.

The abuse she submits herself and her husband to drew shocked gasps from the audience.

The reaction suggested that von Trier, who won the top prize in Cannes with "Dancer in the Dark" in 2000, could be in for a rough ride from reviewers and journalists on Monday.

One U.S. critic said he and others found the film "offensive," and questioned why it was included in the main competition of 20 films in Cannes.

In production notes for Antichrist, the 53-year-old director said that the movie was a "kind of therapy" for depression he was suffering from two years ago.

"I can offer no excuse for 'Antichrist' ... other than my absolute belief in the film -- the most important film of my entire career!"

Persona Non Grata, by Oliver Stone

What I like from the movies of Oliver Stone? (Just had a look over a quite long list and discovered I've seen only, to be indulgent, 10%.) Natural Born Killers, and People vs. Larry Flint and Wall Street. As for documentaries, covering hot political subjects, I always think twice before seeing them, simply because I'm looking for more than common places and ignorant glamorous stars trying to fight for causes they are supporting because they could get an opportunity to be on the first page of the magazines. It's a serious reason I consider Michael Moore's propagandist works, even rising serious subject, a superficial and dangerously simplified way to see the world and he's not too far away of those he pretends to expose.

Oliver Stone is not a political literate and expert. He seized the opportunity, put a bit of curiosity and used his experience as a film director and went in 2003, in the Middle East. Where, as usual, another conflict was on the way, between - you guessed - Israel and the Palestinians. He have a high ranking distribution - Ehud Barak, Benjamin Netanyahu, Shimon Peres, Hamas leaders.. Including Hasan Yousef whose son become recently a Christian and revealed many of the inside-the-house secrets regarding the nature of this movement, many are purposive or not avoiding these days. Yasser Arafat could be seen only through old video recordings. And we see Ariel Sharon only on TV.

Even with a naive curiosity, Oliver Stone wants to know, to get more from his characters - more or less wise or sincere. But the lack of knowledge is not an excuse and almost childish, when Yousef is asking him :"What you gonna do if you house would be attacked?", he's answering: "Exactly like you".

Since then, the circumstances changed - Arafat died, Hamas seems to hold the lion's share among the Palestinians, but the war is still going on and on. Shimon Peres, together with the late Yitzhak Rabin and Arafat, is the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2002-2003 one of the dilema of the moment was what to do with Arafat - to let him living in his Muqata headquartes or to expell so far so good. Hilarious or not, they have been voices among the Nobel Committee complaining that maybe the prize should be recalled, with an exclusive reference to Shimon Peres.

Peres, is having the last word in the "movie" warning that "teaching history is dangerous". "We have to teach our children to develop imagination not memory; to educate the children to learn the history of the future, not the history of the past".

And a doubtful taste, pathetic speculation: "Who's Persona Non Grata" in the movie? The Reason.