The time that remains : review

The Time That Remains is a film written and directed by Elia Suleiman. The film stars Elia Suleiman, Saleh Bakri, Leila Mouammar, and Bilal Zidani.

The Time That Remains is the story of Mr. Suleiman’s mother and his father, Fuad, who talks a bit more than his son and smokes a lot more than he talks. We first meet Fuad in 1948, and he is as dashing and charismatic as a Hollywood idol of that era. Though his experience of the first Arab-Israeli war is by turns farcical, brutal and heartbreaking, he endures it all with stoical grace. In his son’s affectionate recollection Fuad’s life is a lesson in how dignity and humanity can survive dispossession and defeat.

The film itself is evidence that E S has taken his father’s example to heart. Though there is anger, even bitterness, in his portrayal of the humiliations suffered by Palestinians at the hands of Israelis, Mr. Suleiman traffics neither in hatred nor in the romanticism of lost causes. Instead he finds comedy in cruelty, and also the reverse.

The first act of “The Time That Remains” is more or less a war movie. Violence, betrayal and oppression make their way into Mr. Suleiman’s carefully composed frames, but his tone remains quiet and contemplative throughout. And Nazareth itself seems governed as much by clarity and calm as by chaos and argument.

The sunlight on the whitewashed stucco and pale stone walls etches an elegant geometry onto the streets and houses, and the dominant sound is often wind rustling the branches of olive trees.

Some of these carry the sting of satire, especially those that you suspect are close to the literal truth. A room full of Arab schoolgirls sings patriotic songs in Hebrew, for which they are given a prize by a visiting dignitary, while the young Elia is scolded for making anti-American comments in class. His trouble with the authorities will continue, but he and his parents also deal with more mundane matters, like the bad eyesight and worse cooking of Aunt Olga (Isabelle Ramadan) and the crackpot political theories of a drunken neighbor.

Through it all, time passes. Parents age, fashions change, and politics intrudes on daily life, with demoralizing but never entirely catastrophic results. “The Time That Remains,” which punctuates its story with carefully deployed incidental music, with lyrics in both Hebrew and Arabic, ends jarringly but not inaptly with a techno-remix of “Stayin’ Alive.” The song’s title encompasses the moral of this chronicle of mortality and survival, a thorny and intricate film that is also breathtakingly simple and honest