I’ve finally seen Yuval Adler‘s Bethlehem, the winner of six Ophir awards (including Best Picture) as well as Israel’s Best Foreign Language Feature submission. It’s a lucid, tightly wound thriller that’s looks at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a filter of double-agenting and family matters and betrayal and anxiety. And turns it all into tragedy. Imagine if John Ford‘s The Informer wasn’t just about Gypo Nolan getting drunk in bars and blowing his money and stumbling around. Imagine if Gypo had an older brother in the IRA that he worked for. Imagine if several more plot elements and complex turns were thrown into the pot. That’s Bethlehem — a first-rate intelligence drama that had me in its grip and didn’t let up.
The Academy’s foreign language committee would be foolish not to pay very close attention.
Bethlehem played at Toronto and will show twice (11.9 and 11.11) at the AFI Film Fest. Adler, who worked for Israeli army intelligence for several years and has a PhD from Columbia University, will be attending along with Ali Waked, a Muslim journalist with whom he wrote the script.
Bethlehem is primarily a two-character drama about deceivers on opposite sides. At the same time it’s a curiously touching father-son relationship story.
17-year-old Sanfur (Shadi Mar'I) is the pissed-off younger brother of Ibrahim (Hisham Suliman), a hardcore Palestinian militia leader whom the Israelis want to assassinate. The big secret is that Sanfur has been slipping dribs and drabs of information to Israeli Shin Bet officer Razi (Tsahi Halevy), who is hungry, of course, for info about Ibrahim.
Why is Sanfur betraying his brother, family and community by talking to an Israeli who would love to put a bullet in Ibrahim and his comrades? Sanfur was first approach by Razi at age 15, when he was more or less soft clay. Razi is more of a comforter than an interrogator. When we meet Sanfur’s actual father (Tarek Copti) it’s clear that Ibrahim is the star of the family and that Sanfur is seen as the runt of the litter, a volatile loser whom nobody respects.
The decisive dramatic moment happens when the Shin Bet team manages to finally hit Ibrahim. Guilt kicks in, suspicions surface, tensions heat up and something has to give. The big climax is quite a moment. You can tell going in that this story won’t end “well,” and it doesn’t. But it’s tense and edgy and highly believable start to finish.
Here’s a piece by Haaretz.com’s Gideon Levy that claims Bethlehem “is yet another Israeli propaganda film.” It warns that “before lavishing praise on co-director Yuval Adler, critics should stop to consider his film’s message: the Israelis are the good guys, the Arabs the bad guys.” Levy writes that “Adler's avoidance of the [political reality] is abominable. An Israeli who makes an action movie about the intifada without taking a stand is a coward. He knows the subject will attract viewers at film festivals abroad, but at the same time doesn't want to anger Israeli viewers.”
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