Terre promise

(Some plot spoilers) I saw Amos Gitaï's film 'Promised Land' at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 14, 2004 at its 2nd North American screening. The film had just world premiered at the Venice Film Festival on September 7, 2004 where it won the Emblem of Peace Award.

Director Gitaï was at the screening and made some brief introductory remarks during which he said that the film was dedicated to his mother who had passed away during the course of the filming and who had been a lifelong advocate for women's issues. He also said that his main goal with this film was to portray an anti-'Pretty Woman' point of view and to show that prostitution was in no way a life of glamour, champagne and limousines and that prostitution images of that nature, whether portrayed in film media or elsewhere, were even used by criminal elements to lure young women into sexual slavery. Due to time limitations there was no Q and A session after the film.

Certainly with that introduction and the knowledge that this theme and script had attracted international talent as diverse as Hanna Schygulla (The Marriage of Maria Braun, Lili Marleen, Werckmeister Harmonies), Anne Parillaud (La Femme Nikita, Sex is Comedy) and Rosamund Pike (Die Another Day, The Libertine) to appear in the film, I had very huge expectations. Unfortunately, the film could not fulfill them.

(Spoilers start) The story concerns a group of young Eastern European women who are smuggled across deserts and borders at the beginning of the film and then auctioned off in the middle of the night at an outdoor slave market, although they still stay together throughout the course of the rest of the film. They are finally able to determine that they are in Israel and the title of the film is meant to be taken ironically in their case. They were presumably seeking to escape poverty in their home countries but their fate now is likely to be even more cruel. There is no back story provided except for one character's later flashback about seeing a choir sing in a countryside church back in Estonia and her saying in voice-over that 'Estonia seemed so far away'. It was often difficult to tell the women apart due to the dark lighting of the film (The film was so dark that when the cinema's projector went on the blink about 10 minutes in and started showing only intermittent flashing images, the audience sat and continued to watch for a good half minute or so, thinking it was part of the regular film, until finally a few brave souls started to clap in annoyance. After a short repair, the screening continued.) No character or name introduction was made for most of the women which didn't help the situation. They are just objects to be brutalized and assaulted by the various smugglers and guards during the journey. They end up transported to a restaurant/night club that doubles as a brothel and there they are stripped off and hosed down and then superficially dressed and made-up to attract customers. Hanna Schygulla appears in a cameo as the head madam in charge of this process and Anne Parillaud is a junior madam/gang leader. Again, no background is given about them either (although Schygulla calms one of the young women by making it sound like she herself went through the same tortuous journey at one time). At this point a British woman (played by Rosamund Pike) rather mysteriously appears in the midst of the club and there is some suspense as you wonder whether she is there to help the women as some sort of undercover police agent or whether she is a captive herself. The women are held at night on board a ship in the harbor and it is there where the use of a 'deus ex machina' plot device leads to the resolution. (Spoilers end)

Admittedly, the dehumanizing anonymous treatment that the women receive was probably part of the point in order to convey the cold-hearted brutal nature of the background to prostitution, but it didn't provide the audience with a specific character to identify with for most of the running time and when one of the East European women did finally emerge as the lead in this respect, it seemed like an afterthought and rather too late in the plot.

Overall, this has the feeling of an incomplete effort about a serious subject that really deserved more work and it leaves the impression that the budget and thus the shooting schedule did not allow for more to be done. For comparison, see Lukas Moodysson's 'Lilja 4-ever', which gets a similar story across with much more impact, primarily by focusing on a single young woman.

Disappointing, an important story is not told clearly enough. 5/10

My main reason for seeing 'Promised Land', the first film in Amos Gitai's "Border Trilogy", was Rosamund Pike early on in her career. She was a promising young talent at the time and has really grown into a very good and better-than-given-credit-for actress who really delivers in the right role, as can be evidenced in one of the best Best Actress performances of the decade, and one of the best performances that year, in 'Gone Girl'.

There was also intrigue as to how 'Promised Land' would deal with such a heavy, harrowing and nasty subject matter, human trafficking, something that is important to be raised awareness of and not addressed enough in visual media (film and television alike) while also being difficult to do it justice. As can be made clear from watching 'Promised Land'. Any film that takes on a subject such as human trafficking should be applauded for trying, but it is my feeling that 'Promised Land' could have dealt with it much more and handled it with more sincerity and taste. It is neither terrible or great, as a matter to me it's one of those difficult to rate and discuss films, and to be seen to see how human trafficking can be portrayed on screen and for completests of Rosamund Pike and Amos Gitai. That is if one can find it, with that it had a limited release at the time and, other than various websites having it in full, its availability is relatively obscure.

'Promised Land', starting with its strengths, does start off promisingly. It has a very evocative opening scene and some of the first half has a gritty documentary-like feel. Some of it looks good, the first half is shot pretty well, the locations are striking and atmospheric and there is some impressively rich lensing in some of the night sequences.

When it comes to the acting, which is actually not too bad at all considering what they were given, the standouts are Hanna Schygulla bringing a menacing but also comforting charisma to her role (more so than it deserved, with some really clunky dialogue that sounded made up on the spot) and Anne Parillaud, quite moving in hers. Rosamund Pike disappointingly doesn't have that much to do and the role is very limited in depth, but she nonetheless gives a conscientious and brave performance (again like Schygulla, more so than the material deserved). Some scenes are suitably harrowing.

However, 'Promised Land's' promise doesn't last very long. The first half did have its faults, with some of the pacing being dull and taking too long a time to get to the point, but the film really loses its way in the second half. The subject as has been said is unspeakably harrowing, you don't have to have gone through it yourself to know that, so a nasty approach is appropriate and necessary, but it still could have been done with more tact than this. Here the horrors were both excessive and trivialised and the treatment of the women was portrayed in a way that was self-indulgent and gratuitously salacious, done to overkill effect.

Coherence, or lack of it, is also an issue. There is not much going on plot-wise in terms of structure and some of it is aimless. The second half in particular is repetitive and figuring out what's going on beyond the endless stringing of torture (and such) scenes was near-impossible. Telling who was who was the same (the far too dark lighting does not help), with the film having characters that despite the actors' best efforts have no development to them whatsoever. The dialogue is continually clunky and says nothing illuminating about this subject other than what we already know, and Gitai's direction is heavy-handed. Emotional impact is non-existent, the film is just far too distasteful to evoke any kind of empathy and the characters are too flimsily developed to make one care for them properly. Then there's the all too convenient Deux Ex Machina conclusion, which was too much of a cop-out.

Overall, started off with a lot of promise but loses its way drastically in particularly the second half. 5/10 Bethany Cox

I liked 'Promised Land' and I am wondering why it got so many bad reviews from critics and why it did not have a fair chance to meet with the public. Other people comments have too much focused on what they perceive as flaws in the logic of the story. These may actually be real, as Amos Gitai is not the best story teller on screen, but this is not where the essence of a film like this needs to be looked for. The subject of the film is human trafficking and none of the several documentary or pseudo-documentary films I have seen lately did a better job in raising the issue in a strong and emotional manner, shouting about the brutality and evil that is happening in the lives of the victims. It is exactly the lack of logic, the absence of any romanticism or fictional elements that brings the issue in a stronger manner towards the viewers. The series of brutal and realistic scenes becomes surrealistic because the reality is exceeding the ugliness of nightmare. The contrast between the ideal Holy Land and the ideal Israel that Amos Gitai may dream for his country and reality is the very contrast that almost all Israelis have to deal with. This film raises a painful issue in the painful manner that it deserves.

Promised Land is one part of the so-called Borders Trilogy that Amos Gitai has crafted, the other two being Free Zone and Disengagement. In this film, he tackles the issue of women trafficking across borders between Egypt and Israel, in which there seems to be no problems, obstacles or conflict between the peoples of both sides engaged in this illegal trade, which still persists, with various filmmakers around the world taking on the issue head on in their respective geographies, in films such as Lilya 4-ever and Your Name is Justine.

This film can be broken down, I believe, into three parts, and on the whole it's like Gitai taking the audience on a journey to witness first hand the ordeal that the female victims are put through. The shaky cam technique helped in putting oneself there in the first person perspective, though it could be somewhat unsettling, as if the perspective and point of view seem to come from being one of the perpetrators of the trade, being able to partake in, yet only standing by like an eyewitness, but unable to reach out and help the girls.

It's not a documentary, but the effect made it look like one, with conversations up close, and plenty of tight shots choosing to disorientate the viewer, just like how the victims are suffering, as they are moved constantly from place to place in hurried fashions, under the blanket of night, trekking across deserts to their final destination, which at the end of the film, you wonder just exactly where you have ended up in. One scene that'll definitely stir some upsetting emotions, is how the women get herded up and inspected like cattle, having their assets exposed and prodded, chided, stripped of their dignity and clothes, while listening to an auction going around them for the best price from the highest bidder. Before that the girls do look as if they're clueless about their impending ordeal, until it's too late.

The second act dealt with an underground club of sorts, which brings the entire film to the one hour mark. Here the girls are prepared, again in quite undignified terms of being hosed down with water to clean themselves, akin to being a prisoner (well actually yes), and the first step toward their sexual slavery, including making up to beautify themselves for their clientèle later. As mentioned, again the audience is put in the spot, standing by to watch but unable to do anything about it. Perhaps yet again we're thrust into the spotlight, because I think the message is clear that should there be no demand, the supply would naturally dry up. I suppose this approach here is like getting people to swear off meat, to varying degrees of success, by having the person witness how meat is being slaughtered and prepared.

Now the third act I believe was pure Gitai genius, though it may irk many to think, that's it? I had very much enjoyed the ending of Free Zone, and this could rival that as being equally powerful. Without giving anything away here, I felt that on one hand the plight of the women were raised, and there doesn't seem to be anything in sight that could rescue them. Then comes that major event that brings us up and about, presenting an opportunity to be grasped and exploited. It isn't impossible of course, given the environment Israel finds itself in from time to time. On the other hand, the Deus Ex Machina approach here may not go down well in being something like a cop out of a finale. But if you dwell on it deeper, it's the honest truth that there's simply no quick and easy solution to have it solved, especially not on film, hence the approach that unless some form of miracle happens, we're not going to see the problem disappear anytime soon.

Promised Land is one long process from beginning to end that hopes to elicit some response from the audience in either raising their awareness of the problem outside of their comfort zones, or for those who are fueling the demand side of things, to perhaps stop and think if they're contributors to a totally inhuman and undignified process. Oh, and fans of Rosamund Pike who might be drawn to the film because of her presence, you're likely to be disappointed as she only as a very limited supporting role in the film.

It is deeply saddening to realise how misinterpreted this film is by several users. This is one of the greatest works by Gitai thus far. It is obviously about human trafficking and prostitution in Israel; however, there is much more to this film. It tells a story of several Russian women from Estonia that are being trafficked into Egypt and from there, through Gaza strip, into Israel. The style is semi-documentary, which speaks to the reality of the events.

Yet, it seems to me, the message Gitai is sending is not only about the horrors of prostitution in Israel. The subject of female body as a sexual object is in the center of this film. The treatment of women is portrayed in a very bestial and inhumane way. They are traded like cattle, where the highest bidder gets the best animal at an auction. Women are washed with ice-cold water in a group, and then "corrected for" through hasty make-up. The driver that transports women from one "work" spot to another recklessly picks a girl of his choice and rapes her on the road. The scenes are disturbing and made me nauseous on few occasions.

Those who are disappointed about the lack of script or bad acting should look into some documentaries and literature on human trafficking. These are real events that are happening as we speak; to make them more plausible to the viewer or to assign a Hollywood-style script would do no justice to women being trafficked. This film only complements my knowledge of the subject. Congratulations Amos, it takes a lot of courage and determination to create such a piece.