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Aug. 16, 2013
A quiet world explodes
Ziad Doueiri’s The Attack is a powerful story.
MICHAEL FOX
A popular doctor at a major hospital, Amin Jaafari is the rare Arab Israeli accepted as an equal. Cosseted in his comfortable lifestyle, he takes quiet pride in the recognition that he’s made it.
With canny precision, the opening scenes of The Attack encourage the viewer to “kvell” in the likeable Jaafari’s acceptance and assimilation into mainstream Israeli society. Then, in the split-second it takes for a suicide bomber to detonate explosives, Jaafari’s world goes up in smoke. His entire foundation – his wife, his identity, his status and his confidence – vanishes as if it had been an illusion.
In a sense, it was. A key theme of The Attack is that Arab Israelis are allowed to belong only so far and so long as it suits Jewish Israelis.
One of the best movies of this or any year, The Attack pitilessly confronts Jaafari with the depth of his self-deception. The viewer, especially an American Jewish viewer, identifies with the good doctor’s suffering before being hit with the uncomfortable realization that he or his wife is complicit in it.
Beirut-born, Paris-based writer-director Ziad Doueiri has crafted a searing adaptation of Algerian author Yasmina Khadra’s novel. An unflinching story crammed with hard truths, The Attack is now playing at Fifth Avenue Cinemas in Vancouver.
Implicated by association in the suicide attack, Jaafari (passionately and beautifully played by Ali Suliman) is demoted in an instant from first-class citizen to potential Arab terrorist. The investigating detectives treat him harshly, and their interrogation and imprisonment effectively destroy his belief that his medical degree, his awards and professional rank grant him permanent freedom from persecution.
Jaafari is deemed not to have had prior knowledge of the bombing and is released, but he’s shattered by his ordeal. With nowhere to go and nothing to lose, he sets out on a one-man mission to unravel the act that smashed his cozy existence and, equally important, his complacency. He ventures into the Palestinian territories in search of answers, but he’s viewed with a suspicion that’s downright menacing. He made his bed with the Israelis, so he’s condemned to lie with them, or so the prevailing attitude seems to be. No longer welcome among Palestinians or Jews, Jaafari must tap into a latent strain of self-reliance that, frankly, is inspiring.
By this point, the viewer barely recalls the bubble of unearned optimism that scarcely lasted beyond the opening credits. Jaafari’s descent into hell has given us a reality check of serious proportions, and the sense that we are being asked to grow up and take part in an adult conversation.
To that end, The Attack is peppered with painful ironies that perpetuate the feeling we are watching a gruesome reflection of contemporary Middle Eastern life rather than a drama crafted for thought-provoking entertainment. The most excruciating, perhaps, is the suggestion by some of Jaafari’s Jewish co-workers (and ostensible friends) that he let bygones be bygones and pick up again as if nothing has happened. Long stripped of his delusions, he sees clearly their inability to understand how the other half lives and their dedicated allegiance to a fantasy world. The fact that we, too, are shocked by the attitudes of the doctor’s supposed Jewish allies attests to the skill and greatness of The Attack.
Michael Fox is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.
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