Year: 2019
Director: Elia Sulieman
Country: Palestine
Language: French
Best known for Divine Intervention (2002), which won the Jury Prize at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, Elia Sulieman is a Palestenian director who's cinematic style has been compared to Jaqcues Tati and Buster Keaton. I was at the Q&A for his film It Must be Heaven at the Toronto International Film Festival. Sulieman has a great sense of humour, saying "If you don't like this film, I have a brother...and he's big!" He also appeared to be a big film buff as he jokingly claimed he "stole from a lot of sources" for his movie.
Elia Suleiman's unnamed character travels to different cities and finds himself in quite odd and hilarious scenes.
A dash of Keaton, a sprinkle of Tati, and a pinch of Python can be found in It Must Be Heaven. It's an abusrd picture made of vignettes that comically compares Sulieman's hometown of Nazareth to the rest of the world (mainly France and New York). Each vignette starts with an observational shot, then shows Sulieman's reaction to it, and then edits back and forth between the two. The funniest can be seen in the middle of the film when police officers are trying to measure the length of an outdoor cafe and Sulieman is in the middle, quietly drinking his coffee.
In It Must Be Heaven Sulieman is satirising the security and policing that happens everywhere in the world, while pointing out that the West take such matters incredibly casually. We take our freedom of movement for granted. The vignettes about the US demonstrate how preposterous it is that people can buy automatic weapons in the super-maket. Certainly can't do that in Nazareth.
It Must Be Heaven is a healthy mix of comedy and politics. One can get something out of this film, even if they know nothing about Palestine. This is a picture that deserves serveral viewings and perhaps a trip to the library.
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