Chronicle of a Disappearance (1996)

This is How Movies Should Be Made

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

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.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

When I saw this at the National Film Theatre on the South Bank, I was a bit nervous, because I knew nothing of the film and had invited three friends (all of us filmmakers). Afterwards they all thanked me for bringing them--we had laughed through the entire movie, with the whole audience. The film is largely composed of seemingly unrelated comedy sketches. The comedy is very simple, often physical, sometimes surrealist. Every joke is funny. The film is a poignant comment on the Israeli Occupation of Palestine, but made before the New Intifada, so there is not the gravity of Suleiman's celebrated 'Divine Intervention.' Please see this film, it's absolutely wonderful.

Do you think it's easy to make a film about palestino-israelian relationships which is not full of violence, hate and bitterness ? Well, Elia Suleiman did it. His camera is his eye, and he is just not commenting what he is seeing (how could one comment the Middle East ?)But his silence is eloquent enough ! Dear Dzong from Washington, we're not more in the Middle Ages, and today, a piece of art doesn't necessary need characters and dialogues to be valuable and beautiful. This is a film full of a kind of a nostalgy, a longing for a lost peace, a walk in a someone's childhood. I found it excellent.

Totally pretentious bunch of crap. Do yourself a favor and avoid it at all cost. Save the money for something more productive (and there are so many things more productive than going to this movie) Also... never believe a word of the stuff they write in film festival catalogues... trust your instincts.

Kind of a sleeper, but if you like "not Hollywood" -- Children of Heaven (Iranian), My Life as a Dog, etc. -- give this a try. The movie is a series of vignettes or tableaux, some "real life," some fantasy. Often the two intertwine and you can never be sure which is which. On the surface it's about the writer/director's return to his native Palestine, Jerusalem. It's not a documentary and it's not overtly political, but on some level it's both. "I think everything is personal. Everything is political." (Suleiman)The director himself describes the work as "a very 'Iranian film' because of its crossing of documentary with narrative approach." (Quoted from a post (#30963) by Kia Fri Jul 30 15:34:03 1999 on the Message board of The Jewish-Palestinian Encounter Site. What I like best about this movie is the slices of Palestinian life, the deliberately over-slow pace as an antidote to the daily Middle-East news: the director and a friend sitting timelessly in front of a "Holy Land" trinket shop, a bunch of guys night fishing on the Mediterranean or Dead Sea, a long and slow descent down an old road into Jerusalem to the sound of an ancient/modern song of reconciliation, scenes from the Suleiman household, peeling garlic and small talk, Mr. Suleiman Sr. arm wrestling the local youth, etc. These things give the movie a timeless beauty. Politically -- although as Suleiman points out it can't really be separated from the personal -- a French tourist/friend? pontificates to the director about the origins of Mideast violence, perhaps framing our "Orientalist expectation from audiences in places like Europe and the States." (From Invisible City - Coco Fusco talks with director Elia Suleiman about Chronicle of Disappearance. In another scene, a Palestinian women with "good Hebrew" tries to find an apartment. She can "pass" on the phone, but her name is a give-away. And in a series of scenes from a Palestinian theatre piece, the dance is so Jewish one wonders how such a wide gulf has come to separate the two communities. (For an interesting take on Palastinian-Iranian-Jewish 'resemblances', see further discussion from the Message board of The Jewish-Palestinian Encounter Site.) No Violence. A good film to generate discussion amongst family members. Ideal (essential?)for deconstructing the nightly news view of the world.