The more convenient things are, the more likely they are to become shortcuts, to become traps that make people abandon their thoughts and actions and indulge in them. The language in the film is also this kind of convenient prop with a drug-addictive nature. Perhaps we are so dependent on speech that we think it has become the only language. Using it as the dominant authority for conveying information abandons the willingness to construct narrative contexts from complex pictorial contexts.
With excessive concern for the phenomenon that people in the FMCG era did not have time to appreciate slow, long things, artists began to produce bento works with straightforward words and no language that could flirt with imagination. Making watching movies and TV dramas a boring trap like boiling water bubble noodles.
The Palestinian Suleiman, both the director and the actor himself, is using "Must Be Heaven" to change the brainless viewing habits in a comedy style close to mime, and is also deconstructing Orientalism.
The West inside and outside the play associates Palestine with war and conflict, and the film takes It Must Be Heaven as its name, borrowing Suleiman's trip to New York and Paris to affirm the Western Orientalism on the surface, and to satirize the Western discourse power with a ridiculous substance.
Must it be heaven, must it be heaven? If you look closely, both New York and Paris have been frightening, or are being trepidated. The nations of the world are both rendered by their peoples as a paradise of peace and harmony, and are overthrowing the former's rhetoric with multiple and diverse internal and external contradictions.
When the West habitually interprets Palestine, in fact, the world is full of Palestine.
Suleiman disguises himself as a human footage involved in the event, embedded in Nazareth, Paris, and New York. His only line in the film is to explain his origins to the black drivers in New York, which is a chapter that confidently declares his identity to the West. However, he did not particularly fight for the Palestinians. With his provocative eyebrows as his only expression, he calmly watched the three worlds. The dialogue that will be relied upon by the film becomes a monologue, presenting the true face of the so-called hell or heaven with the tolerance of "no dialogue, no unified conclusion". Yes and no are all in images that are not clear in directivity and at the same time meaningful.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Nazareth</h1>
Nazareth does have evidence to support the Orientalism that Western scholars firmly believe in. There are armed fights in the streets, and there are fellow men like vultures in taverns. The square marked the evolution of civilization has men urinating, while the policemen, who hold binoculars and instinctively see more clearly, turn a deaf ear to the primitive barbarism in front of them.
Suleiman doesn't judge in words, but examines with silence. Nazareth was certainly not heaven, and he did not deny it. His neighbors can walk into his courtyard with dignity, and after picking his lemons, they are not ashamed of stealing, but instead use "knocking on the door every time they come in" as a civilized bell. Another neighbor would stop him on the road and tell him a fabled story about how the snake blew air on his tires and raised his front half to bow to him. They are self-deception and narcissism, but these can still be regarded as trivial, and even some funny and cute problems, how exactly have they been altered into the same "war chaos"?
Suleiman stares at fragments that seem to have no linear connection, walks out of the labyrinth in uncertainty, and after traveling far away, tries to explore a definite answer.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Paris</h1>
Suleiman sits or strolls through the streets of Paris, and there are indeed confusing parts here. The fashion crowds that shuttle back and forth are packaging this place as a bustling metropolis that adults yearn for. Even when night falls, you can see the catwalk from the display screen of the opposite building.
But there will also be moments of desert that fade away, and the next day, Paris is like an empty city, with only bottles piled higher than trash cans to prove to Suleiman that the bustle seen yesterday is real.
Only trees and wind remained in the park, and the wind flowed smoothly and unhindered through the empty city. Occasionally, Suleiman can hear the city's romantic notes for him in the complex. For example, the roar of aircraft above, the noise of tanks in front of you. The frequent presence of police officers representing safety is either patrolling in front of a car, wasting time on a bouquet of flowers under the car. Or it is to measure the area of the store with care.
The absurdity of the police state and violent law enforcement, the extravagance of social welfare, these paradise countries in the world of.
The most vivid representation of the human scene is the "seat dispute". The circle of seats around the fountain has soared from yesterday's unpopular to today's soaring value, becoming a scarce resource for people to scramble. The reasons why people are vying for a place are not all for the purpose of need, but only for the purpose of possessing or declaring strength. The muscular youth on their bicycles would snatch the chair from the toddler. The person who is about to leave is reluctant to take the benefit of painstaking efforts, preferring to pinch his ass rather than put down the chair. There are also two gentlemen, even if the chair already has a master, still have to follow closely, looking for the opportunity to "eat the tiger's mouth" at any time.
On the way to Paris, Suleiman's plane encountered bumps, and when passengers and flight attendants were indifferent, only Suleiman looked at him with curious or panicked glasses. In the eyes that represented the identity of the foreigner was curiosity, confusion and alertness. He saw the emptiness behind the crowding, the squeezing behind the welfare, the barbarism behind civilization. It represents a hidden danger in the blindness caused by habit.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > New York</h1>
The black driver in New York excitedly waived Suleiman's bill after learning that he was Palestinian. In his acquaintance, one can see the western masses' near-compassionate enthusiasm for Palestine. However, at this time, New York actually needs this sympathetic vision even more.
In the country's political ambitions to intervene in other countries with the aim of "presiding over peace", its own people have to carry guns obliquely, and have even become accustomed to carrying a vegetable basket. In the country's cultural outlook of emphasis on liberation and openness, behind the bands that celebrate joy are a group of well-behaved, rigid mothers.
New York's parks are late autumn, with layers of forest and trees embroidered with colourful colours. But behind the trees, what stands even higher is the gray, consistent buildings. An angel appeared here, but she had a strong sense of ambition, and she was wrapped in Palestinian colors. The demands she wanted to express were blocked by the police in New York, where a comical chase scene was staged.
Strong and brave police forces are slow, sluggish, and even stupid in their pursuit. When they finally "captured" the angel and tried to cover the cloth with the flaunting Palestinian color, the angel disappeared in vain.
Is it a cover-up solution that fails to touch the essence of the problem, or is power adept at playing a butchery trick of superficially appeasing the actual silence?
On the streets where makeup games are staged, Suleiman sees Death eating in front of a stall. The angel who escaped from the policeman's cloth was riding his bicycle through the streets. In the United States, New York, is it the god of death who holds supreme power but worries about three meals, or the angel who cannot fly with wings? In fact, the two of them have the same destination, and they cannot escape a layer of ink.
Suleiman returned home, after a visit to the "paradise" of his hometown. Neither Paris nor New York adopted his playbook of peace in the Middle East. Peace itself is both a grand aspiration and a tacit joke in private. A place that could not accept the construction of the heavenly draft must not be heaven, and Suleiman had to go home.
His neighbors came as usual, plucking his fruit without consent, pruning his branches, watering his tree, and showing great enthusiasm in their lack of thoughtfulness and courtesy. In the woods on the outskirts, the woman with the basin on her head took off her turban and slowly walked home.
Suleiman continues to document fragmented countries and fragmented times, leaving some gaps in the patchwork and loosely seamless narrative that requires the audience to associate with themselves. His films reveal a little less, and those who watch his films think about it for a while.
At the end of the film, Suleiman sits in a bar, listening to the noise of young people. At the beginning of the film, there is a solemn religious scene, where people sing the same melody and form a phalanx under the leadership of the religious authority belt. By the end, authority is broken up by young and equal group portraits, and the same melody is washed away by a cacophony of noise. This is not necessarily Suleiman's deliberate contrast, but there is an element of deliberate ridicule.
When we look harmonious, are we really united? Are we really messy when we look disordered? The question in front, for the Western world, the confusion in the back, Suleiman's film replaces the Palestinian question.
Suleiman always took off his hat, except when he was sleeping, he always looked like he was going to leave at any time.
Is he still going to find heaven? No, I like the scene where he stands by the sea, which has the meaning of welcome and sight. Create some new discourse and discard some old ideas.
The sea is blue, there is no end, where is heaven? Not anywhere we are, but also where we can see.