Ajami - Stadt der Götter

I just saw this at the London Film Festival. Oh, what a treat.

Taking on the fashionable use of related threads and retelling the same narrative from a different angle, this film delivers a bullet tough view of street life and crime around Jaffa.

The audience is sucked into the maelstrom so quickly, that we forget the media view of the great enmity and realise that there are, of course, many smaller ones. While much eventually revolves around Israeli governance, this is not a blame game but a Shakespearean tragedy.

Unlike City of God, the casual viewer is not always given heavy clues about a characters background - and which side of the racial / religious divide they are on. And subtle differences can end up being of major (often fatal) importance. Beware.

This is not a film destined for multiplexes. Its a man's world where women are a distraction. There is no victory for political correctness. But more to the point, we are not given any particular reason to believe that Things Will Get Better.

I attended a 'full house' screening at the Tricycle Cinema in London, having invited a party of 6 people of different ages and backgrounds. The consensus was unanimous, an excellently executed film, showing the rawness and tensions simmering within Israel's Arab & Jewish populations.

In his pre-screening presentation the director correctly focused on one of the core reasons why Jews & Arabs continue to be suspicious of the other...in many ways it is down to the Jews not speaking Arabic and only a few of the Arabs speaking Hebrew. It is amazing that the Israeli government has yet to address this issue.

This is definitely a film which needs to be seen twice in order to comprehend all the various nuances. Two scenes stood out for me...the Judgement scene at the Beduin elder...and Dando's family grieving.

Well done!

Ajami tells the tale of Israeli Jews and Arabs, albeit splintered. The audience is treated to a violent opening followed by dialogue and interaction. As they see the individual characters unwind, the Arab store owner, the Israeli cop, things begin to get more complicated.

The primary power of Ajami is in its mode of storytelling which correlates to the content itself. There are several chapters, each telling a different story. What is most intriguing is how these stories fit. A character will appear two chapters later only for his intentions to be revealed then. A certain act of violence, a consequence of violence, etc. are not contextualized but only taken in the moment. The viewer may be tempted to judge or hold preconceived notions about the characters until the filmmakers, often with great effect, reveal the true intentions of these individuals.

This can be applied to the whole of the Israel-Palestine situation. Each violence has its lasting impact on individuals and groups alike. In Ajami a murder is not only between the victim and the perpetrator. Likewise reading in the news about a killing can only tell a fraction of the truth. The filmmakers wisely adopted a very documentary like feel to this film, similar to The Class and Gomorra. Characters names are only mentioned realistically. There is a sense of confusion as to who is whom for some of the sequences. At times it is frustrating because a Western audience may be more tempted to discuss the actual identity of a character than understand the point of the movie as a whole. Another issue is that this documentary, video approach to film-making can sometimes feel problematic or trite. By the time the third and fourth chapters are reached, there are several emotional climaxes. But these are immediately followed by more revealing. It works in most cases, prompting me to give Ajami a very high mark.

It is a film worth seeing for anyone interested or disinterested in the region. A highly potent character study that proves, perhaps unintentionally, the power of a filmmaker to show or to not show intentions.

Astonishing that this is a debut feature from two young directors. The film, named for the Jaffa neighborhood where most of it takes place, chronicles the story of several neighborhood residents who tread through life amid rampant crime, strict Arab family structures and rules, clan law, revenge killings, harsh police and racism, and the growing Jewish presence in the neighborhood. It could have easily fallen onto the abundant clichés which generally characterize films that delve on this subject matter - but instead, there are no fingers pointed, no blame set and no far-fetched allegories. The focal point is always on individual human beings, and the injustices and tragedies that constrict their paths.

There is the sensitive kid thrust into a situation that requires more maturity and smarts than normal for his age, there is the couple whose love incurs disapproval because it crosses ethnic lines, there is the authority figure who protects you today but may turn against you tomorrow... the problem is, this movie has two of each of those. The cast of characters is huge and hard to keep track of, the plot is artificially discontinuous, and in short if you want to get the movie straight, you'd better be ready to see it twice. Which you may want to, because the acting is convincing and although the characters are used from time to time to make a clear and didactic sociopolitical point, they win considerable sympathy from the viewer-- without, for the most part, being oversentimentalized.