Rana's Wedding (2003)

Just perfect...

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Hany Abu-Assad has proved himself with this film, 'Ford Transit', and 'Paradise Now', to be one of the most interesting and astute chroniclers of the Palestinian experience in Jerusalem.The plot is simple: A young Palestinian woman must decide whether to defy tradition and marry her boyfriend that day, or leave forever with her father, and enter an arranged marriage in another land.The film sometimes meanders, but has some very powerful sequences, giving a strong sense of the realities of life under occupation, and some sweetly human comic moments showing the universality of humanity in all cultures. Very good lead performances all around.

This movie starts out a bit artsy, which I found off-putting, but it improved quickly. I found the pace of the movie slightly tedious, but this is necessary to show what Palestinian life is like (waiting hours at check-points to go anywhere is not unusual). Some parts of the movie were slightly confusing for a non-Palestinian audience to follow what was going on. The lead actress who plays Rana was very good. It is not a story about the Israeli occupation, it is a story about Rana, but it does show a lot of what it is like in Israeli occupied Palestine. If you don't mind that it isn't Hollywood, I would recommend this movie purely for the interesting setting.

I will long remember the acting of Clara Khoury in the main role in this film. I do not know if she is a professional actress or not, but she could be. She acts beautifully with her eyes and facial expressions. Many of the greatest films in history especially by French and Italian filmmakers have used non-professional actors in their films. The film is especially valuable in showing the fact that normal everyday life can go on even under foreign occupation.I admit to bias in favor of the Palestinians in their quest for freedom from Israeli occupation, but I actually thought this film was deeply moving as pure drama. The visual sweep of the film, the music and the deeply moving poetic fragment at the end were almost overwhelming.I certainly hope that Kino Video or some such distributor of quality foreign films will pick this up for distribution, although I suspect certain influential political action committees might object.Highly Recommended.

A fair depiction of the hardships under occupation, and the customs of the middle class Muslim Palestinians in Jerusalem. Perhaps because it was filmed in Jerusalem streets under such adversity, this film is a bit amateurish with mismatched music substituting for compelling acting.