http://youtu.be/OPcvn4Mtglc
Omar opens Friday, Feb. 21 at FilmScene’s Scene 1 theater.
Parkour may not be as popular as it once was, but don’t tell that to anybody fleeing the Israeli undercover police in the occupied territories. Adam Bakri does a lot of this in the title role of Hany Abu-Assad’s 2013 film, Omar, though the topography of the occupied territories is just one of the many obstacles that Palestinians have to face. One of the most compelling parts of Abu-Assad’s movie is the detailed and often heartrending portrayal of the everyday inconveniences, dangers and indignities that his characters have to face as part of the constant wartime atmosphere of occupation.
Omar is the central character in a world that is essentially un-centered, and his story seems at times not even to be centered around him. During his days, he works in a bakery and carries on a relationship with his girlfriend Nadia, the sister of one of his close childhood friends.
His other life, together with this same friend, is that of a resistance fighter in a cell of an unspecified affiliation, which early in the film carries out a sniper attack at an Israeli military installation. When the Israelis capture, imprison and torture Omar in the aftermath of this shooting, he is forced to choose between becoming a double-agent for Israel or having his life, that of his friends and — most crucially — of Nadia utterly destroyed.
As Omar sorts out those choices he attempts to find out who else in his circle has been compelled to make the same decision, often finding conflicting, incomplete or deliberately misleading information. The unmistakable message is that decisions and relationships that in other circumstances might be taken in stride have, under Israeli occupation, consequences which can be quite literally life or death. Suspicions of traitorous behavior can destroy a marriage, a family, a future, since punishment for this behavior will come from both sides.
Though Abu-Assad himself is originally from Nazareth, his sympathies in this film are not equivocal. There are undoubtedly many fair-minded, reasonable, and kind members of the Israeli security forces, but you will not meet any of those people in this film. Instead, you will see a portrayal of occupation forces as an oppressive and all-knowing presence which necessarily limits not only political choices, but also personal, fraternal and romantic ones as well.
Much of the discussion surrounding the film focuses on its two star-crossed lovers, to me the film is more essentially concerned with questions of loyalty of all kinds, with Omar and Nadia’s romantic loyalty to each other begging a larger question: When placed in an impossible situation, whom can you never betray and, as external political pressures are applied, will these people feel feel the same toward you?
