Movie Review – The Time That Remains

The Time That Remains (2009)
Written and directed by Elia Suleiman

Filmmaker Elia Suleiman tells all his stories through an autobiographical lens. I imagine it can feel overwhelming to tell the story of the Palestinians when you are one of them, especially when multiple experiences are happening at once within the occupied territory. You have the Palestinians of Gaza, the Palestinians of the West Bank, and those who live outside these two yet are still not free. Suleiman presents himself and many of his characters in his work as cold & distant from what is happening. To be in the torment your people have endured for decades just isn’t something that a person can be expected to walk away from with their sanity intact. The camera is another distancing tool and film tropes, too. They allow a person to examine something painful without needing to be directly inside of that pain.

The Time That Remains tells the story of the Israeli occupation from the Nakba of 1948 to the present day through the life of Elia Suleiman’s father and then the director himself. Fuad (Saleh Bakri) is a young man when his people are forcibly displaced. The film shows us, via a stylization reminiscent of Wes Anderson, how Palestinian leadership, worn down by the violence inflicted on them by the Israelis, signed over their rights and handed over their weapons for a cessation of war. Fuad is a gunmaker and knows that this round of the fight is over. That doesn’t make his journey through his neighborhood as occupying soldiers swarm through it, forcing people out of their homes, easier to bear. He eventually gets picked up, and they identify him by his occupation. Fuad is forced to go through a mock execution before being chucked over the side of a hill, bag still over his head, and arms still bound. 

Years later, Fuad established a life and family in Nazareth. He has a son now, a young Elia. This is a new world, a violent one, with threats hovering over the heads of every Palestinian. Yet, the director maintains a light comedy atmosphere over everything. It doesn’t sound like it would, but it really works. Fuad focuses on what he must do daily, leading to repetitive scenes. Saleh Bakri looks like a classic Hollywood actor, which fits the imagined hero figure children often attribute to their fathers. He delivers a stoic performance, a man holding back tremendous emotions because there isn’t time to breathe in this dangerous place. 

One of the repeated sequences involves Fuad and a friend fishing at night. Each evening, an Israeli military jeep pulls up, a spotlight is shone on them, and the soldier asks in a friendly tone if everything is okay. They reply they are good, and the jeep moves on. Eventually, the jeep stops, the spotlight is shone, and there is no friendly question. Fuad and his companion eventually turn around in stony silence and are met with suspicious questioning. The message is clear: things have changed for the worse. The Palestinians are no longer being tolerated, and now they will be pushed to give up even more than they already have. 

Little Elia is having his own struggles at school, where praise of the Israeli regime is strictly enforced. Officials from the occupying government come to visit his school, where the children sing a song praising the Israeli overlords. Later, Elia is admonished by the headmaster over a conversation we are not privy to. The only hint of the discussion comes in the man’s question: “Who told you America is colonialist?” It’s a moment that reminded me of how tightly wound the United States is to this Middle Eastern colony, how propaganda supporting one uplifts the other. 

Eventually, the film jumps ahead in time again. We see Elia as a teen, just as he has to flee the country for his exile in New York City. The final chapter sees Elia playing himself, returning as his mother has become ill. He is wordless, watching from a distance. There is nothing he can do to help her now. In the same way, he cannot do anything about his homeland. Quotidian violence is everywhere. One scene shows a tank slowly aiming at a harmless passerby. If you are Palestinian, you are assumed to be worthy of nothing but a bullet or artillery shell. It is not a place where you expect humanity to thrive anymore. Yet the Palestinians endure. 

Elia addressed the passing of his father in Divine Intervention, and here, the film ends with a contemplation of what life will be like when his mother is gone. Those people, like threads that tied him to the time before the occupation, are gone now. Elia serves as a passive witness to the crimes. We will see next week how his cinematic exploration comes to see life in Palestine reflected across the globe in It Must Be Heaven.