Divine Intervention – Elia Suleiman - 2002


Anatomy of a film





The Theatre of the Absurd, or Theater of the Absurd (French: "Le Théâtre de l'Absurde") is a designation for particular plays written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. The 'Theatre of the Absurd' is thought to have its origins in Dadaism, nonsense poetry and avant-garde art of the 1910s – 1920s. Despite its critics, this genre of theatre achieved popularity when World War II highlighted the essential precariousness of human life. The 'Theatre of the Absurd' is primarily existentialist. It is also often known as theatre indented to shock the audience. Most exemplary is Beckett's Waiting for Godot. Divine Intervention is an avant-garde dark comedy "Cinema of Absurd" so to speak that shocks the audience by its brutal sarcasm on Palestine-Israel conflict.



At first film seems like a collection of unrelated slices and episodes of life in Nazareth, but slowly these small episodes begin to interconnect to one another and create a wholesome in an avant-garde and abstract way.
The Arabic title of film which is Yadon Ilaheyya bears more profound meaning than its English title Devine intervention and ties very well with the symbolism of Jerusalem (Beito' Moghaddas: Sacred Home) which is the birth place of Christianity. The post colonial intervention of Americans and British, Christians in general through last seven decades in the name of god and religion has always been an issue in this conflict for Palestinians.

Elia Suleiman's sharp knife-like satire parodies Hollywood/East Asian box office cinema by transforming the woman who represents the mother land to a Ninja. She defeats the heavily armed Israeli soldiers who are performing the fight with choreographed dances and moves which represent the fact that the Israeli side has rehearsed this war and the whole thing is like choreographed/directed show. The red balloon with Arafat's portrait on it is another metaphor well utilized. The classic film, The Red Balloon (Le Balloon rouge - 1956) represents cinema and serves as Palestinian voice which can pass through any check points and go beyond the barricades and borders to be heard and cinema is a perfect medium to do so. Film avoids explicit political messages instead leveraging some repetitive bizarre habits of people in film to create situations that are heavily armed with political objections and protest against the tragedies Palestinians have been going through. Habits so bizarre such as the man collecting empty bottles and sorting them out on the roof to use them a defensive weapon when the Israeli soldiers come to his house, or the man who dumps his bag of trash into the neighbor's back yard and the neighbor dumps them back at his yard in respond, or the man who's waiting in a bus stop knowing the bus will never come or the woman gathering the garbage in the back yard and burning them etc.

In the opening scene we see Santa Claus is being stabbed in Nazareth, the birth place of Jesus. Santa Claus instead of facing the kids and handing them the presents, runs from the kids and leaves a trace of presents dropping from his bag unwillingly as if Santa Claus who represents innocence is frightened and has to run away from the youngsters.


Suleiman’s appearance in the film as the film maker character E.S. or perhaps himself with a script and two walls full of post-it notes representing pieces of an unsolved puzzle is an emphasis on the fact that the artist has lived the story and is not fabricating it. The form chosen for the film seems quite unrealistic and abstract from reality but using the pieces of day to day habits of ordinary people and Suleiman’s appearance as himself serves at its best to give the audience a sense of realness of the story. Perhaps the two walls represent the two sides of Israeli Palestinian conflict and E.S. as an artist in between is avoiding to take any sides but to piece the how puzzle together and be a voice to tell us the story. The stalled script symbolizes the conflict between the Israeli and Palestine that is going nowhere or no solution has been good enough to resolve this long going war. One of the characters in the film is E.S.’s father who sits in his kitchen, drinks coffee and smokes while checking his mail. He doesn’t open most of the mail and just piles them on the side. Mail represents the communication tool from the outer world; however this communication turns out to be nothing but a pile of junk mails. The man in the balcony who’s barbequing is a representative of this outer world whom in his comfortable world is not even slightly bothered or concerned. When the neighbor brings up the issue of his car blocking the garage door, he asks irrelevant questions such as the brand or the model of the car. In another scene, on the right side of the frame three men keep beating up a person who is out of the frame while in the left side of the frame some men are just watching the event without any reaction. In visual language of camera there is subtle convention of left side of the frame represents the west and the right side of the frame represents the east. This is derived from the fact that nearly all maps have north at top, thus west is left and east is right. This perhaps is another indication for who western world is just simply watching this conflict in silence without any reaction.

On the post-it notes there is a message which appears in several scenes and it says “I AM CRAZY BECAUSE I LOVE YOU.” The message is aimed at the woman who appears to be E.S.’s love and also as mentioned above is a symbol of the mother land. Suleiman and many other Palestinians who love their mother land can have a comfortable life in other parts of world, yet they continue this painful love affair and Suleiman is questioning this craziness in a poetic way.



In the hospital scene, three ill men resting on the beds, the heart monitor devices produce steady beep one by one which should indicate the connected patient is deceased but each one of them get up afterwards and walk to the balcony to light up cigarettes which indicates their die-hardness. In the same scene everybody in the hospital is smoking which perhaps is a criticism on Palestinians’ approach on all the self-destructive paths they’ve taken to fight this war such as suicide bombing approach.