Shoshana

Giving this an 7/10 rating

Grim true story drama from good old Micheal Winterbottom, so it's rather good and very bloody, this one. Set in the late 1940's in Palestine, The conflict and four characters- Shoshana Borochov, played by Irina Starshenbaum, who is simply brilliant in her very complex role. Douglas Booth as Thomas Wilkin, Harry Melling as Geoffrey Morton and Aury Alby as he very unlikeable Avraham Stern, all are the foils to each other and the tale bounces around these four.

The action is extreme and bloody and very real, bombings assasinations, shootings all over the place, in fact there are so many it's common place, which is the horror and the beauty of it, the life blood of the narrative, but very, very necessary. It can be very cold and also beautiful, as the film looks and acts for the people are surrounded by nothing but death.

This film is right now, very topical so it will give you a sense of the sheer madness of what is going on in that region of the world and any where else for that matter. Expect plenty of death and shocks as Micheal Winterbottom turns it up way up, this is a limited release so the choice is yours, if you can stomach it. It's good, but just how good is going to be up to you, because of the subject matter is just so raw right now, and that it self is the message.

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.

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.

Watched this during the Red Lorry Film Festival in Mumbai. The movie depicts a certain part of the independence struggle that led to the downfall of the British Empire in West Asia, leading to the formation of independent states of Israel and Palestine.

One of the most genius things the makers have achieved is that they haven't taken any sides, be it the British, the Jews or the Arabs. Each faction is depicted in contrasting ways, and none can be seen as a hero or a villain. Considering the super-sensitivity of this topic right now, not taking sides could be considered as an advantage for this movie.

The weakness of the movie lies in the character development. None of the characters get well-defined enough to have a substantial effect on the viewers, and by the end of it, you don't really feel much for any of the characters, dead or alive.

Overall : 7/10.

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.