Film Directors vs. Guns

Yesterday a Palestinian man showed me his feces. It didn't matter that the man was Elia Sulieman, and his feces were a movie called The Time that Remains, it was just as scary as any other time a Palestinian man showed me feces.

I'm not being mean because I actually really enjoyed the movie. In fact, the first 30 minutes were pretty flawless and well exciting. Thats the bits when he talks about the active role that his dad took as a Palestinian nationalist in the early days of the State of Israel. Stirring stuff. But then it all gets a bit off the boil. Bits of it are boring. Bits of it are well over-stylised. But the real problem for me, (or if not a problem, a time bomb), was just how personal this movie is.

About half this movie is shots of Elia Sulieman playing himself but doing an impression of Buster Keaton, and staring at his mother and father and their maid, as they go around their daily chores.

In a way the film is sustained by the setting of it or whatever, because it genuinely is interesting to hear from someone who lives in that area. There's lots of pretty cool visual gags about the dark absurdity of living in Palestine: An Israeli soldier parks outside an Arabic nightclub and bobs his head to the beat while calling curfew. Stuff like that. But that in itself makes you feel even more that this film is immensely solopsistic, as in "How can this guy be banging on about how he feels about his mum and dad when he's in the middle of a fucking warzone."

Which is totally unfair I guess. But you can't help thinking that when you watch the movie. That's all I'm saying.

I've heard people say that there's only so much longer Sulieman can keep doing this Nazarene Buster Keaton schtick. I think the bigger thing is how long cinema, or art cinema anyway, can go on like this. How long can we be so besotted with our directors.

Because this is the most mastubatory piece of cinema ever produced. I'm convinced of that. This is the apex. The man plays himself, in a film about his own life, set in the actual house where he grew up. Its like CCTV footage of his soul. But its the apex of something which started I guess with the Nouvelle Vague and the auteur manifesto. Suddenly directors were allowed to talk about themselves and how they feel the same way that painters had been for years and years. Then really intersting things started happening like the Antoine Doinel series. You watch those movies and you're like "Man this is scary. Truffaut is sitting next to me and shouting about his marital problems."

There are definetly nice things like that in Time that Remains. Like there's this one bit were a guy comes to his door and is like "I got you this Tabbouleh with raisins just how you like it," and we're all like "Woah that really is how he likes it!"

I'm rambling, but the point is maybe that personality and subjectivity, which you probably thought would always be necessarily original and challenging is now itself getting hackneyed. You do watch this movie and think I don't care pal, I don't care.

Or I did. I don't want to tell you how to think. And who cares how I feel about this stuff anyway. I don't even know if you're allowed to call Palestinians douche-bags