Michel Khleili - Wedding in Galilee
Introduction
Wedding in Galilee is a lyrical movie which presents which presents a sensitive and a large issue in a simplified view. The movie provocatively and rhythmically evaluates Israel and Arab conflicts via one-day-long event, a ceremony of the wedding in a dusty and small village of Palestinian. This is described as an occupied village which is under strict curfews of the military. Based on the wedding of the governor’s sons the military Israel governor agrees to concede the day provided that he as well as his staffs are present at the event as guests of honor (Kheifi, 14:16). The wedding ceremony is set against the thrilling and high women’s ululation because they are because the father to the groom has been forced to invite the military governor of Israeli and his staffs.
Wedding in Galilee is exotic to the eyes of the western states as it lures the audiences into a Palestine village ritual wedding feast in Israel. The movie is directed and written by Khleifi Michael who was born and elevated in Nazareth and currently living in Brussels who relies on eastern wandering narrative depiction. The movie is fully detailed and generously presented when demonstrating the existence of Palestinians. The writer of the film turns simplistic and heavy whenever he is trying to bring out the description of Israelites with the 20th-century setting. The movie utilizes a single dimension in order to narrow down the understanding of the audience. The sympathies of the writer in the film appears to be unexplored for obvious reasons. When the leader of the village makes the decision that his son should conduct a traditional celebration that must go throughout the whole night he is expected to acquire permission from their governor in order to completely break this curfew. The governor wears a headdress as well as a long robe with an impassive and weathered face which is a visual of a composed dignity. An Israel officer who is presented by the film writer as an injustice ogre roars that the village extremist must thus be taught a lesson by raising the curfew as the guest of honor in the particular village (Kheifi, 23:17). The film was produced in the period when there were no virtual films portraying the life of Palestinian. The film utilizes a dismissive perception towards the Israelites. The film depicts the Arab village to be in love with almost all the present anthropological details. The film utilizes slow details accumulations to ensure that the readers fully understand the concept of the film, he slow details piling becomes deadening at least. this presents the movie as a strong and a very rare sample of a middle eastern film which makes a vibrant depiction of the middle eastern culture. Unlike most of the palatable easily films the movie completely forces its audiences to make decisions on whether to separate the concepts of art and those of politics. In addition, it also permits the audiences to make decisions in regard to whether they should accept the film on the basis of the created terms.
The movie clearly illustrates the writers view in regard to women based on the femininity concept of both Arabs and Israelites. The film is based bodily and wealthy grounds in the society. However, something that makes the film as unique is that it withstands all the setting argumentative at the Palestinian-Israel conflict and goes beyond everything that is viewed as obvious. Instead, the movie addresses the subtle and complex relationships based on the daily existence of Palestinian (Kheifi, 34:16).
A wedding in galilee is a movie that is characterized by different voices which is executed as an opera that generates traditionaland archaic and the present world into a confrontation. The scenarios with the village leaders and the military governors bring people into a dramatic struggle. This is in that it develops a confrontation amid individuals, political and cultural grounds (Kheifi, 44:06). All this takes place in a colonial scenario under the full domination of Israel. According to the film the Middle East has utilized so much time in accepting and embracing changes. The old world does not want to leave their states and the modern one is consuming too much energy to bring changes. The film highlights that the region requires changing and change must be incorporated sooner.
Despite the fact that the film is seen as a criticism against the Middle Eastern states it is a depiction of regional boundaries. This film, therefore, demonstrates the need for the Middle Eastern religion to embrace changes as well as development (Kheifi, 31:08). This is accomplished through a peaceful conclusion which helps in gaining additions visions in the audience's mind. The epilogue helps in following the struggles of individuals living in the particular region and the need for achieving transformation. This is depicted through the expression of oppressions by the leaders thus sending a message of the individual’s future wish and gaining a life that is occupational free.
The film places more privilege to certain characters and tails over the others, but the camera is attentive, independent as it captures the lives of Palestinian at the same time both from inside and outside. This it does while moving between Palestinian’s viewpoint s, which comprises of the angry groom, a provocative sister, a father who is very accommodative, conservative and conformist, young radicals and Palestinians collaborating with Israel. There is a shift between the father who is dealing with external matters and a mother dealing with interior matters and a conspiracy of young militants plotting against a governor (James, 1). The director manages to shift from the perilous picturesque constantly portrayed in the Palestinian community and which is induced by the colorful sounds and images. Various aspects in the community such as ideological, familial, generational and sexual tensions are exposed and conveyed by the movements of the camera or the transitions of montage from a single locus to another that is opposite (Shohat,1). Although such differences in the community are alluded to in the film, it tends to mainly reflect a common struggle or history of liberation from the occupation of the Israeli forces. Another allusion is the firm sense of cultural identity and a connection rooted to the land and its history and an actual defiance to the occupiers’ denial mechanisms. The camera’s affectionately scrutinizes the collective rituals and ceremonies of the rural community, and also shows a degree of fascination with the Eastern anthropology while making a subtle political point. The manner in which the camera fluidly shifts from a character to another and a thorough blending of various languages and voices shows that a society that is divided along economic classes. The film attempts to audibly and visually refute the control of the Palestinians by the Israel occupier forces while trying to represent them as accidental natives of the land that was unoccupied. The Galilee Wedding film associates the land, crops, vegetation and the plentiful food with Palestinians but not Europeans Jewish (Shohat, 1). The strategies utilized by the director where he conflates have gains as well as losses. This is shown in the presence of a Palestinian nationality having a clear vision of the need for political liberation struggle. The film further attempts to show that the whole of misery experienced by the Palestinians has resulted from the disastrous encounter with the Israeli forces. This makes the narrative structure of the film a kind of national legitimization.
This film represents a significant contribution to the Palestinian filmmaking at the national level at very critical points in the development of the nation. His works is poised in a manner to oppose the tone of the propagandist tone of Palestine Liberation Organization militant’s films after the end of the 1967 Six-Day War in which the Israelis gained large territories. This had become to be known as al-Naska or disaster to the Palestinians (Ball, 4). The Wedding in Galilee has meditative and lyrical style which drew the attention for the manner in which it tended to capture a deep sense of insecurity in the nationhood of the Palestinian. It has directed in a thoughtful ambivalence or rather an “accented cinema” and this could be the main reason why it became the first feature film from Palestine to be accorded international recognition, thereby being awarded the International Critics’ prize. Contrasting it with the PLO’s work, the Khleifi’s vision power of nationhood can be found in the manner in which it recognized many conflicts that existed within the Palestinian society and especially touching on the gendered and generational concerns (Ball, 4:6). The film managed to establish the interplay of masculine and feminine, male and female, traditional and modern identities at the core of the aforementioned vision. In this sense, the film introduced, in the Palestinian cinema, a strong inclination towards the introspection and a gendered self-critique. The film, in all sense, has the legacy of the producer’s aesthetics that can be said to be very daring, and including his inquisitive attitude towards gender. Khleifis interference with the gendered paradigm points towards a potential for feminist and arises a nationhood model that departs from the conventional notions of unity, while embracing a destabilized, fragmented and hybrid Palestine vision.
Wedding in Galilee incited international outcry and acclaim among different nations in the Arab world on certain basis. First it placed focus on the occupation of Israeli military and secondly, its portrayal of the weak, physical gendered body. The extent of the film intact is seen where the Israel distributors appealed for the title to be changed by cutting it to The Wedding with an aim of diluting the disturbing political back drop in brought in center stage by Khleifi. On the other hand, critics in countries such as Morocco and Egypt condemned how male impotence was displayed, the use of female nudity as well as the interchanging of gender roles (Ball, 6:7). The portrayal of a conflict between gender concerns and current political concerns is clearly a core issue in the film. Yet, the producer applies his sharply political perspective to the serve a poetic realism which is made up in the utilized folkloric style. The style depicts a Palestine whose visualization is done obscure tones of sunlight that is filtered through olive trees (Ball, 7). To provide a distraction from the radical content of the film, a romantic scene is brought in, but it later shifts to the interaction of the nation and gender issue bringing the former to the forefront. The film is set in a location similar to that of a Palestinian village in the Galilee’s official territory. This context is what is what helps to focus the attention of the view towards the direct control of Palestine by the Israeli. It exposes the existing conflict between the Israeli governance and the national identity of the Palestinian people, where the wedding of the son of the village patriarch. The tension arising between the occupied and the occupier and among the villagers themselves is exposed and more so between the son and the father while attempting to perform this wedding (Shohat,1). The compromises that Palestinians have to make are indicated especially in agreeing to have the Israeli governor and his soldiers attend the ceremony as wedding as guests and guards respectively. The climax of the film is a representation of the most transgresive aspect of the ceremony seen in the eruption of the celebration into elated rioting and where the Israeli occupier is ejected from the village. It could be seen as a premonition of the First Intifada which erupted shortly thereafter from 1987 to 1993(Ball, 7:8). The Palestinian patriarchy impotence under the occupier force is allegorized in the scene where Adel has to consummate his marriage. Even if the scene has proof of ceremonial authenticity in that the spouses are in traditional robes to portray modesty while the husband is washed his feet by the wife , the episodes is actual a profound indication of distorted gender roles. Adel is unable to consummate his marriage, in that he cannot perform sexually. He attributes his failure to his father’s love but realizes that his father’s complicity with occupier force’s structure has served to emasculate him within the Palestinian’s maleness paradigms (Ball, 14). His marriage is no longer a sign of an affirmed tradition but the failure of Palestinian autonomy.
The disruption of the power structures that are gendered is seen where Adel’s wife seeks to fulfill the community’s expectations by taking her own virginity to affirm respect for tradition and the transfer of phallic power a female subject. The transfer of national duty and authority to female from male subject is core to Khelifi’s work, but it can, in a broad way, be linked to the conventional nationalist designs of female identity. The indecisive status linked to female agency is shown in the manner in which competing gazes at female body is shown in the film which is a symbol of the challenges associated with viewing woman as a construct. During the preparation of the bride for the wedding, she is revealed as an attractive figure when being scrutinized within the traditional realms. While being washed by her family and as water is cascading over her naked body, she appears to represent a powerful Palestinian femininity figure but also shown as eroticized thing which affirms her as being the object of her husband’s desire.
On the other hand, the setting of the film is that of an occupation period, but strongly critiques a possible armed resistance which is evidenced in the failure of the young men to execute a plot against the governor. The film shows the status of the country as being an imagined community which is a discursive construct developed from principles that are hard to realize. Khleifi constructs the drastic new political object that shows the present and traditional concerns of nationhood which are circulating besides one another. While the film forms a vision of destabilized Palestine, it shows a new national essence which prevented the Palestinian cinema from looking beyond the concerns for principal nationalism.
Conclusion
The Wedding in Galilee is an astounding film work that has an analysis which is clear-sighted, an aspect that is shown in the way it portrays the power constraining the development of the Palestinian community. The films director’s attempts to call out for a change from within the society and for freedom in which people exercise their rights for self –rule. The film also depicts the place of female gender in the Arab world, where power was focused on uplifting the honor of men and women being subjects. It represents possibility of disruption in the power structure centered on men, where women are called upon to accomplish what is deemed by the culture as the role of man.
Works cited
Michel, Kheifi. Wedding in Galilee, 1987. Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094229/
JAMES, CARYN .Review: New Directors/New Films; 'Wedding in Galilee,' Palestinian Village Tensions. 1988. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=940DE7DF103CF932A25750C0A96E948260
Ball, Anna. Between a Postcolonial Nation and Fantasies of the Feminine: The Contested Visions of Palestinian Cinema. Duke University Press (.n.d).4-14 Available at: http://cameraobscura.dukejournals.org/content/23/3_69/1.full.pdf
Shohat,Ella. Wedding in Galilee (Michel Khleifi, 1987). Middle East Research and Information Project. Available at: http://merip.org/mer/mer154/wedding-galilee
