Al Garib

Who is 'The Stranger' in this strange land, the disputed Golan Heights captured by Israel back in the Six-Day-War of 1967 and now a mystical, misty terrain in Ameer Fakher Eldin's debut feature. The surprise in this Palestinian submission to the international category of the Academy Awards is how beautiful this ruined, mountainous land looks, even after all that has happened here. Daubed in mist and fog to the point where the viewer can feel the damp set in, the land shakes with the constantly rumbling gunfire from afar.

Stubborn, like its protagonist, Eldin's film is a portrait of alienation and exile. Having bowed at Venice and currently making the rounds of the Middle Eastern festival circuit with berths at Cairo and the Red Sea Film Festival, The Stranger can be a challenging watch, although there's something about its shrouded visuals - presented in boxy Academy ratio - that always appeals, despite the tough voyage.

Eldin's work is a timeless piece, in which 1967 feels like yesterday and the scars haven't healed. And there's no doubt that the gloom and smoke hang over a lingering sense of depression, dispossession, and claustrophobia. The hardscrabble inhabitants are, or were, Syrians, until geopolitics left them stranded. Now Israeli troops patrol senseless checkpoints - affably enough, but there's still a danger. Everyone is emasculated, reduced.

Adnan is, perhaps, The Stranger of the title - although another man will arrive to ostensibly claim that role. Adnan is, as in Camus's novel, the hero who is 'condemned because he will not play the game'. As played by Ashraf Barhoun and written by Eldin, Adman refuses to be distracted from the existential angst that has derailed his life, decamping to his family's orchard, where he has concocted a plan to stop the trees from freezing by building a stove.

A failed doctor - he went to Russia to study but never passed his exams - he's a disappointment to his father (played with charisma by Mohammed Bakri), who claims Adnan "has never met my expectations, any day of my life". He's married, to Layla (mostly an offscreen voice), and the father of a doe-eyed daughter, but he neglects them to chew over his old wounds and feud with his father, who has disinherited him. Layla, the only female presence here, still loves him, though it's hard to figure out why.

In this hopeless mist, even the family cow seems to be giving up, delivering bloody milk, and Adnan seems set on his own drunken downfall until he discovers an injured man on the other side of the border fence and brings him back to his hovel. It's not clear if this man is a soldier, or a terrorist, but Adnan is suddenly shaken into a sense of purpose which rouses The Stranger from its determined doldrums.

Eldin gives us a rare insight into a land suspended in time, locked in its disputed status -poor and stranded.

This is a very slow and drawn out movie. The first half is really good; you get this slow burn and build up, you get into the mood of the scenery and the characters. Very well done and was expecting things to continue going well.

Unfortunately the movie ends half way in, just as we are about to start getting into the bulk of the plot synopsis. Around this point things go horribly wrong and the movie takes a straight edged turn into nothing. It derails itself and it reminds me of a very pointless 6 hour long turkish drama, without the 6 hour run time that is, or even the drama. They just abandon the first half, and start piecing together random scenes with bizarre and scant dialogue that make no real sense up until credits.

It plays like a monologue of things they wanted to make a movie about but never did; instead we get this really weird sequence of pointless scenes that serve no purpose but to allow run time so some random words can be spoken. I am not going to get into details (spoilers) about what is said but it went from a good movie to somebody's diary being read in prose. It is not even a reflective movie, although this is what they wanted to show but butchered it so bad it cannot be considered such. The delivery is just horrible and has 0 effect on the viewer; it is also extremely boring and disjointed further ensuring whatever points they wanted to say, were properly ignored by any audience!

The ending.... What is that even supposed to signify. We are missing a scene (or 500), clearly, because it jumps around to be incomprehensible on purpose. Then fades into narration of things that are contradictory to what was said 20 minutes ago. I understand he went rogue against the wishes of the village elders, but it is never actually said why, what exactly occurred and where it is happening..

How is one supposed to interpret that... the final location was perhaps the last chance they had at some cohesion here and they threw that out into imaginationland. Tt does not match places from earlier in the movie so as you go through theories about the ending, you have to discard them because they do not work.

Unless of course it is just an omission and what we are shown is just filler content and we have to go by the narration, which leaves one of two possible outcomes. Both of which are absolutely stupid and irrational.

Very unfortunate it went like this... it had a lot going for it but they spliced another script half way in and just forgot what they were doing.

4\10 it will make you think, but only as far as you trying to fill in the blanks of the script.