Movie Review – It Must Be Heaven

It Must Be Heaven (2019)
Written and directed by Elia Suleiman

Like most artists, Elia Suleiman has specific elements he wants to continually examine, looking at them from different angles and revisiting images from his past to see if time has changed their meaning. After watching four films from Suleiman, I see how some critics would say he keeps making the same movie to an extent. These movies will always have Suleiman playing some version of himself. The persona he presents will be a nearly silent, deadpan one. The story will be told in vignettes that work in isolation but can also be viewed collectively to make something more significant. Suleiman is playing the Holy Fool and, through that lens, can observe the world in ways the rest of us cannot.

Suleiman is living in Nazareth and becoming overwhelmed by the increasing hostilities of the Israeli occupation on the Palestinians. It seems to come to a head when he is driving home and sees a car with two Israelis and a blindfolded young woman in the back. Suleiman books a flight and is in Paris in no time. However, the streets of Paris seem almost just as deserted as the ones back home. The presence of law enforcement, provided every technology possible, is ubiquitous. There’s a ballet of cops on Segways pursuing a bank robber. When Paris becomes too much, he continues on to New York City. There, he walks through bodegas where every customer is packing either a handgun or rifle. On the streets, the arsenal continues. He discovers that humanity seems to be living lives similar to those under colonial occupation; they are blind to that fact.

Throughout all these moments, Suleiman remains the observer. He does not interrupt; he views what happens without direct comment. As an archetype in Western culture, the Fool is typically associated with a higher knowledge of the human condition. The Muslim Holy Fool, from my brief reading, appears to have a divine connection with God. This has the benefit of divine wisdom, and it is in this concept that I can see what Suleiman is doing. I kept thinking about many of his films and how much he reminded me of the angels in Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire. They lived outside the society, always watching it and never able to be a part of it. 

The way Suleiman plays his film persona has me thinking a lot about the feeling of being neurodiverse. I’ve never really felt integrated in most places I’ve lived, but I’ve always had a strong sense of observing people and how they interact with the systems around them. It’s an alienating feeling in the same way Suleiman’s character appears isolated from his immediate surroundings. Through the lens of my autism, I see that by conceptualizing the world as a television show, people perform roles and seem to be reading from a script. Finding authenticity within such an all-encompassing, overwhelming performance of humanity is difficult.

The absurdity of things emerges in tiny moments. Suleiman meets with colleague Gael Garcia Bernal to see if he can help him get funding for the next picture. During this cameo, Bernal tells someone wanting to know more about Suleiman’s work that the director is “not a Palestinian from Israel — he is a Palestinian from Palestine.” At a conference for Palestinian filmmakers, the moderator has to tell the audience they can clap at the end of the introductions because if they keep at it the way they are now after each name is spoken, the panel will not even be able to happen. There’s an unpacking of what it means to be Palestinian in the eyes of other people, including Palestinians in the diaspora.

Suleiman is feeling the limits of his filmmaking because a large part of the movie is about him trying to find funding after his French backers pull out. He doesn’t make movies that explore the Palestinian condition from an angry perspective. He can only speak to his experience and provide what that lens tells him. There’s a moment where he gets a tarot card reading and is told, “There will be Palestine… But it ain’t gonna happen in your lifetime.” I think this is such a vitally important piece to expound on. I see declarations on social media all the time that “Palestine will be free in our lifetime,” and I think it’s become yet more noise in the toxic positivity sphere.

Palestine will be free; that is inevitable, but it is okay if that isn’t in our lifetime. Our work pushing for revolution is not in vain if we die before those fruits come to bear. This is part of understanding what it means to be in a collective, a single piece in a more significant multi-generational movement. I will not live to see all the great things I desire for humanity that will propel this species into a new realm of understanding and harmony with the planet.

I don’t need to live to see them to know it will happen. I can feel the pull of history leading us there. I will play whatever role I can in moving us in that direction. I do not need to see the grand finale with my own eyes. It would be nice, but it is not the totality of why one should engage in revolutionary thought. We work for a revolution we will never see come to pass because it is the greatest thing a human being can do to build for those to come in the hopes that their lives will be gentler and safer. 

Suleiman wanders the globe, asking if anything he does has mattered. People know about Palestine, and he’s regarded as a hero by some of those he meets simply by existing. But these same people live in places oblivious to the parallels between the oppression in their homeland and their own. That can feel like you’re talking to a brick wall if you’re an artist, not seeing any immediate effects towards the positive. Perhaps the greatest accomplishment you achieve is opening a handful of other people’s eyes toward revolution, motivating them to do something. There is much to be proud of in that. So many are sleepwalking, and jostling a few back to the waking world is an important job. 

Suleiman’s film persona seems so tired. His hair and beard are gray, nearly white – a stark change from his dark black hair in the late 1990s. Both his parents have passed on. He’s a solitary figure in the backdrop of Nazareth as the occupation forces crank up the pressure. He knows he likely won’t see the day of liberation. It’s sad to accept that you won’t, but we keep moving forward because it will come someday.