By Nick Chen / Sight & Sound (June 15, 2021)
Proofreading: Qin Tian
The translation was first published in "Iris"
While some directors keep their best lines to themselves, Elijah Suleiman has spoken just three in four films he directed and starred in.
It is worth mentioning that these three words all appear in the Palestinian director's latest tragicomedy "Must Be Paradise". As usual, Suleiman plays his alter ego ES, but here he breaks his silence when a New York cab driver asks about his home country. "Nazareth," ES replied, before adding, "I'm Palestinian."
And for the rest of "It Must Be Heaven," ES is subtly incorporated into the carefully crafted mise-en-scene, playing a captivating, eye-catching observer. Loose episodes include ES flying around the world to pitch movie projects. In Paris, Vincent Maraval, one of the founders of the Wild Bunch company, complained with a slightly self-deprecating tone: "Your film is not Palestinian enough...it takes place in Palestine, but it could be everywhere."
But like Divine Intervention (2002) and Time Is Still (2009), It Must Be Heaven is actually a series of comedy sketches that juxtapose everyday poetry with violence. In one wacky sequence, a bird refuses to leave the ES's laptop; in another, two soldiers swap sunglasses in a car until the camera freezes on a blindfolded woman in the back seat.
Meanwhile, ES observes that Palestinian violence is following him, spreading across the globe. Or, as Suleiman himself told me at the 2019 London Film Festival, it's "the Palestine of the world".
Q: When Gael García Bernal introduced you to a producer, he said, "He's a Palestinian filmmaker, but he makes interesting films."
Suleiman: Exactly. That's actually what another big American producer said when he introduced me to Clint Eastwood, who was the president of Warner Bros. Pictures, and that's what he said to Clint at the time : "He's a Palestinian filmmaker, but he makes interesting films." Clint then winked at me and said, "All you can say is that things are fickle."
Q: Were you pitching your film to Warner Bros. Pictures?
Suleiman: Actually, they wanted to be involved in making a film of mine. I asked, "Why do you want to do this?" They replied, "It will help our catalog." Making a movie of mine in the U.S. would not have been possible for Warner Bros. Pictures unless I went to do it. One of their films, you understand?
Q: But in a way, "It Must Be Heaven" is also a New York movie.
Suleiman: But it wasn't the kind of commercial film I might have been asked to do. Every line you hear in the movie is something I've heard elsewhere. I just translated them into the language of the movie.
Q: In your films, the world seems to be connected by violence.
Suleiman: It triggered all this. Everyone lives with violence. I've lived all over the world, I've experienced the Palestineization of the world, it's no longer just a local geopolitical zone, it's everywhere you go.
The sound of the siren seemed to have become some kind of stressful trauma. Sometimes I wait to see if it's an ambulance or a fire truck, but don't expect it to be a police car. Because if you live in Paris and you've seen the horrific events - I'm still terrified. When I hear the sirens in my apartment, I'm like, "Oh no, please, don't do it again."
The film tells how the hell broke out in Palestine, where a very full-fledged system of fascism has existed for decades and is still seen as everyday. Then the protagonist in the film turns his back on the violence and goes to live in another place. Just like me.
I'm talking about what I've been through, like what happened in Paris. You are traumatized because now wherever you go, violence will follow you. I was really traumatized. I don't talk too much about this myself. Maybe chat more with my wife. But it didn't go deep enough to look closely at the emotions I had about what happened in France at the time, which amounted to living a double trauma.
Q: You show two sides of Paris. There's Carla Delevingne's fashion show, and there's homeless people.
Suleiman: He came to Paris to see heaven, only to see another form of global violence. It's just pretentious: fashion and pretty girls. But the next day, the streets were deserted. He didn't know it was July 14th (French National Day). It's a pretext for establishing a connection with Paris - Arabs dodging the police, tanks roaming the streets.
Q: In your films, the silence and the breaking of silence always add a lot of tension to the humor.
Suleiman: There is a lot of fun in the process of creating sounds. Many times, what really stays in your mind is the sound, which comes from the memory of the image. I always thought that the sound was not in the background but parallel to the image.
Q: You are often compared to Jacques Tati. Can you talk about who has influenced you? For example, I said casually, Mr. Bean...
Suleiman: (shaking his head) No, he's too old-fashioned. I prefer Tati and Buster Keaton. I'm not inspired by them - everyone thinks so. I made movies before I knew who they were. But I love their work and I'm flattered by the comparison.
Q: So do you feel humiliated when I mention Mr. Bean?
Suleiman: I don't pay much attention to him. Maybe you'll watch his TV show while eating noodles. And some of his stuff is really interesting. But Peter Sellers movies make me laugh because they tend to have some really complicated jokes.
Q: At the end of "It Must Be Heaven", when the protagonist comes to a gay bar, it reminds me of the bar scene in "Time Is Still". Seeing people jumping around is very cathartic.
Suleiman: The last scene of the film goes back to my identification with a new generation of Palestinians who stripped away their nationalism and became activists. That's exactly what I've been trying to do for decades to be a citizen of the world. In fact, they have become citizens of the world, from where they are, they don't need to travel the world because they now realize that Palestine is a concept of gender equality, a concept of progress, a concept that builds on all injustices in the world Identity concept.
I look at them with positive hope as they express their resistance with expressions of cultural diversity and festive spirit. So their rebellion against occupation is against their oppressors. You can't arrest creative people. Of course, you can always put poets in jail. But you can't stop poetry.
Q: So you think young people can save the world?
Suleiman: I wish I could be 30 years younger. I envy what the younger generation is doing now. The people you see in the last scene are people I actually saw with my own eyes during filming. There is a certain synchrony between the emotions that I build within and facing those emotions. I haven't seen those people before.
Someone on the set told me that Haifa has the prettiest bars. We were almost on a tour, going all over the place. At 3am, so late at night, the last bar is a gay bar. I watched while drinking. I thought, "This must be the last scene of this movie." That's great. It totally matches my feelings and emotions. Like a doomed scene.
Original link:
https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/interviews/elia-suleiman-it-must-be-heaven-palestine-paris-global-violence
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