Shoshana

This is a curiously undercooked iteration of a story that well exemplifies that expression about one man's terrorist being another's freedom fighter. It's the underwhelming Douglas Booth who is Wilkin, a police detective based in British-administered Palestine and a man who has a semblance of decency to him. His boss "Chambers" (Ian Hart) is a bit more of a player, though - and he drafts in the much more "hands-on" Morton (the unremarkable Harry Melling) to get results more quickly - not least the apprehension of Stern (Aury Alby) who is determined to establish a Jewish homeland and doesn't much care which tactics he uses to accomplish that. The personal story is largely historical fact, so there's no real jeopardy here, but it's an interesting postulation on just how the British tried to administer a region and a population that had no interest in being administered, and that was being logistically manipulated with the shortest of term vision for anyone's future. Palestinian and Jew could agree on just one thing - get the UK out, but thereafter there was little consensus as the bombs and the bullets continued to fly. To be honest, I found the contribution of the eponymous woman (Irina Starshenbaum) to be almost incidental to what is essentially a rather dryly brutal story of a territory that always has been and will be fought over. It looks fine, but somehow it's all just a little too bitty - episodic, even, and it needed a bigger hitter to deliver the narrative more engagingly and convincingly. Pity.

Follows two British policemen, Thomas Wilkin (Douglas Booth) and Geoffrey Morton (Harry Melling), as they hunt down charismatic poet and Zionist independence fighter Avraham Stern (Aury Alby), who was plotting to oust the British authorities. Meanwhile, Thomas falls in love with beautiful Israeli Shoshana (Irina Starshenbaum).

The film features a whirlwind romance, intrigue, betrayal, chases and historic events. Michael Witterbottom (24 Hour Party People) directs this romantic drama with a political thriller background, which tells the story of Shoshana Borochovm, daughter of one of the founders of Socialist Zionism and a British police superintendent named Thomas Wilkin. Giving a detailed description of the Irgun, it was a Zionist paramilitary organization that operated during the British Mandate of Palestine, between 1931 and 1948. It was established as a militant branch of the Haganah ("The Defense"). The Irgun has been considered a terrorist organization. The Irgun was the predecessor of the nationalist political party Herut ("Freedom"), which gave rise to the current Likud party.

Based on historical events when Palestine was a quiet province of the Ottoman Empire, where there was a Jewish community. At the end of the 19th century, the trickle of Jews began due to the diaspora, all of them travelling to Palestine determined to build their country in the Promised Land and under the Balfour Declaration. After the end of the First World War and the conclusion of the Treaty of Versailles, control of Palestine was granted under a Mandate to Great Britain, and the trickle of Israeli immigrants became a flood, and by 1936, at the beginning of the Arab revolt, there were already more than half a million Jews in Palestine. This is the volatile context in which this story moves, which also functions as a portrait of why and how the current conflicts in the Middle East began. And adding specific historical references on screen, such as: On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was founded. The apartment where Avraham Stern lived is now a museum in his honor. Geoffrey Morton successfully brought several libel suits against accusations of having murdered Stern, after Palestine he served in Trinidad and Africa. Shoshana Borochov lived in Tel Aviv until her death at the age of 93 in 2005.

The film was well directed by Michael Winterbottom. His films often deal with social and/or political issues such as Go Now (1995), Welcome to Sarajevo (1997), Wonderland (1999), In This World (2002) or This Shoshana (2023). His films often make references, visual and/or spoken, to the works of Werner Herzog. Due to the improvisational element of much of his work, his films often use hand-held - sometimes digital - photography with crudely edited jumps between scenes and locations, e.g.: Butterfly Kiss (1995), Wonderland (1999), With or Without You (1999), The Claim (2000), 24 Hour Party People (2002), In This World (2002), 9 Songs (2004). He made his directorial debut with two documentaries about Ingmar Bergman. His production of Love Lies Bleeding won the Silver Prize at the 1993 New York Television Festival and the 4-part series 'Family' has collected numerous awards at film and television festivals around the world. He also directed the opening story for the first series of the multi-award-winning Cracker. Winterbottom has made all kinds of genres: drama (Wonderland), period films (Jude), war (Welcome to Sarajevo), western (The Claim), musical comedy (24 Hours Party), documentary fiction (In This World), erotica (9 Songs), even science fiction (Code 46) and film noir (The Killer Inside Me). Shoshana's score: 6.5/10. Good and interesting movie. Worth watching.

Given the lead time for any film, one assumes that this was planned, shot and mostly edited before the recent wave of atrocities (on both sides) broke out in Israel/Gaza/Palestine (choose which name you will). Nevertheless, the timing of its release is poignant.

The film is set in British-controlled Palestine in the thirties and forties as Jewish settlers clash with the indigenous Arabs, sparking off a wave of atrocities and counter-atrocities with the British finding themselves taking increasingly rigorous measures to suppress the violent factions on both sides, to the extent that they pretty much become a third terrorist force.

The Arab point of view fades from the film fairly early on (which is a shame) and the drama centres around two British policemen (Douglas Booth and Harry Melling - who's done some very interesting work since his Harry Potter days) and their attempts to track down and arrest a Jewish terrorist leader played by Aury Alby. Matters are complicated by the fact that one of the officers (Booth) is in a relationship with the titular Shoshana (Irina Starshenbaum) whose sympathies lie with those who wish to create a Jewish state, if not necessarily with those who employ indiscriminate violence to this end.

Things spiral out of the control of all parties as violence begets violence and the body count rises exponentially.

It's difficult to sympathise with either side, nor does the film attempt to do so (one well-known incident is depicted in a deliberately ambiguous manner). Are there any good guys? Maybe there are some well-meaning individuals caught up in events they can neither control nor comprehend, but the viewer is left shaking their head at the barbaric futility of it all. Who's to blame? Everyone who's set foot in the region over the last three thousand years, probably.

It's impossible to watch this film and not think about the events there today. The British may have gone, but the violence still remains - and is only getting worse.

The cast all do a terrific job, and the film's not short of tension. I just wish that a more positive message could be drawn from it.

I have no idea why this is getting anything higher than a 6 star rating from some of these reviews. I watched this movie based on those reviews and I was so upset I had to log in right after watching just to warn people, this movie is endless talking which minimum plot. It was like you follow the main character as they travel around and bump into minor characters and have a emotional conversation that means nothing for the next scene. I enjoy movies with zero action as much as the next movie snob but it has to have a good plot and feel like an actual film and not time wasting scenes. The only reason I even gave it 4 stars was for some of the settings but I am honestly debating on giving just 1 star.

A whistle stop history lesson accompanying the opening credits, teaches us (if you didn't already know) the main touch points of the forming of Israel. Actually I think most people probably don't know do they. If you don't though, please dig deeper than this film. Still, it's dense. Sides forming, violence increasing. It's here that we meet Shoshana (Irina Starshenbaum). She's part of the more liberal open-minded Israel, but a more hard-line politics is growing. Men young and old, Jewish and Arab. All looking to further their cause. It's a three sided battle, to start at least and Shoshana finds herself in the middle. The English are still in charge of the region, which is how we meet young army officers like Geoffrey Morton (Harry Melling) and Shoshana's love interest policeman Thomas (Douglas Booth). It looks good, period detail, believably cast, but it's clunky in its set up. Granted it's a complicated story to nail down in a couple of hours and it certainly doesn't pull any punches, but this is not a good film. Nobody comes out particularly well, least of all the British. This is essentially the story of them buggering up the Balfour Declaration, whilst masking it in the mirrored complexity of Shoshana's love life. She's the soul female voice of reason and common sense again to start at least, in a world of warring men with misguided ideals. It's not a pleasant watch. You've got to ask yourself does this portray the narrative well and accurately. It's difficult to watch it as pure cinema. The real life events hold too much weight. It's effective in bringing the past to life, but it's dramatic retelling was always going not feel lacking. That said the levels of complexity are undoubtably compelling. It's just a shame that this chooses to lean in directions that don't feel anywhere near rounded enough, it's undercooked and with a subject like this, that's pretty unforgivable.