Lemon Tree
Director Eran Riklis
Screenplay by Suha Arraf & Eran Riklis
With Hiam Abbass, Doron Tavory, Ali Suliman & Rona Lipaz-Michael
In cinemas
Lemon Tree is a sure-fire serious drama about the poor poker hand held by the Palestinians when the Israelis are the bank.
The film won the 2008 Berlinale Panorama Audience Award. It gives us a very realistic view of a defiant widow, Salma (Hiam Abbass), thrust into coping with the bureaucracy inherited when the Israeli defence minister and his wife move into their designer home.
Salma's house sits on a potential security-breach pathway. As a result, the Israeli military decide to uproot her with token compensation citing part of the Intifada Act.
Enlisting Ziad, a warm hearted lawyer with a finger-smelling tic (Ali Suliman), Salma defiantly struggles her way through the Israeli-dominated law courts, with no real help from the Palestinian National Authority.
As the Israelis confrontationally impose their watchtower, fences and military presence, Salma's 50-year-old lemon grove suffers from lack of tending, forcing her to overcome these obstacles.
The relationship between Salma and Ziad begins to change, which in turn causes the male-dominated society (in the form of honour and guardianship) to intervene.
Lemon Tree is a great ride which ends in a highly plausible but contentious scene.
The penultimate scene is, however, very moving. It is a panning crane shot of the monolith that seems to permeate so many of the issues surrounding the region — Israel's so-called "security fence" that dissects the West Bank.
Lemon Tree is an insightful film directed by self-proclaimed Israeli/World director Eran Riklis (who co-wrote the screenplay with Suha Arraf, and that of The Syrian Bride). Two operational units were used during the making.
The film features some wonderful performances notably from Hiam Abbas, whom Riklis worked with prominently in The Syrian Bride (2004), which was about an engagement between a couple that never met due to the occupation of the Golan Heights by Israel.
That film's tension-filled silences sit well with the unspoken pain that the usurpation of her long-standing land caused her.
It is said that Riklis wanted to create a starring role for Hiam Abbas. Abbas also plays a strong role in Tom McCarthy's The Visitor (2007). It, along with Lemon Tree was shown at the Sydney Film festival this year.
Another fine performance in Lemon Tree is that of the Israeli defence minister's wife Mira Navon (Rona Lipaz-Michael). She pulls off the role with her fragile glass chin held high even when it's expected for her to be politically tight with her husband (Doron Tavory) who is consumed with the all-pervading issue of the security of Israel and cannot see his way to a conscious personal opinion.
Ali Suliman, who plays Ziad, also featured prominently in Paradise Now (2006) — an excellent portrayal of Palestinian suicide bombers. He played one of the bombers who could not go through with his mission.
The wonderful cinematographer Rainer Klausmann adds yet another excellent string to his bow after being the director of photography on Downfall (2005), Das Experiment (2001) and The Edge of Heaven (2007).
The director of Lemon Tree portrays one of the central issues surrounding the Isreali/Palestinian conflict — that of land ownership — and a multitude of others, so well that it does him extreme yet ovation-worthy credit.
With a bulldozer-full of excellent scenes, a film such as Lemon Tree is bound to do well with intelligent audiences.