What do we usually think of when we think of "Nazareth"?
As if in a vague mess, we will recall that Jesus is associated with this place: he spent his youth in Nazareth and is therefore called "Jesus of Nazareth". In fact, this is the home of the Virgin Mary, the "Virgin Mary Cave" is an important local holy site, and there is also the "Angel annunciation Church" on it, which has extraordinary significance for Christian culture. It has also been a sensitive place in the Years of Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but as soon as we encounter such political/identity situations, we immediately fall into a certain stereotype. Apart from the habitual division of the opposing sides into "good" and "bad" as in the villain's book, it is rare to realize that there are actually a large number of Orthodox Christians among Palestinian Arabs; we automatically put on the glasses of "resistance", "sorrow", "suffering" to accept the narrative of the here and now; we ourselves examine "populism" while appreciating and "taking sides" in the here and now nationalism with a strange mentality, regardless of which side.
"It Must Be Heaven"
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If a Palestinian movie "comes", what kind of image do we "expect" to see? Is it like Kusturica's Underground, or Amir Khan's Wrestling, Daddy?
《Underground》
What if this film dashed all our wayward (though we don't realize how willful) expectations of these peoples, identities, politics, cultures, and even genders were dashed? Isn't this a film in the modern sense that liberates the image? It doesn't "lust your desires" (at least trying to do so).
So, is this another academic thesis-style film that "dissuades" the audience, full of obscure imagery and symbols?
Palestinian director Ilya Suleiman's films are the opposite — from "The Palestine Trilogy" to "Must Be Heaven," which won the 2019 Cannes Film Festival Critics' Fabisi Award for Best Film, not only visually comfortable, but also captivated us with a unique sense of humor. Often from the beginning of the film we are attracted by the director's innocent, watery, eyelashes of the big eyes (he always appears in the film to "see" - look at us, but instead of us to "see) - he does not take a stance, but everywhere there is an attitude, this attitude is absurd and ironic, but not cynical, this way of "seeing" and the characteristics of scene scheduling, instantly remind people of the French film master Jacques Tati, no wonder the name of this film is translated in Taiwan as "Mr. Director's Holiday" - Apparently, the translator made up his own mind to link it to Mr. Hulo's Holiday.
"Must Be Heaven" director Iria Suleiman
In Jacques Tati's films, however, Suleiman's film is closer to Playtime—the jaw-dropping, satirical simulation of the so-called "globalization," "global village," and "modernity" landscapes, which is their primary similarity, and then the creation of a comedic atmosphere. Especially when we see black sanitation workers on the streets of Paris beating cans as golf balls at the door of sex shops (parody of Tiger Woods), when we see street fashion girls interacting with window models in high-end shopping malls, LED rolling shows to form a flowing landscape, and the cleaning aunt does not care to wipe this luxurious picture with a rag, when we see Mr. Director slamming the captain with the door when he got off the plane because of the insecurity he gave him during the flight... It's all very jacques Tati!
Stills from "Must Be Heaven"
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Tati's comedic nature is extremely difficult to learn, and unlike Chaplin's comedy, it can achieve some similarities by grasping the "tearful smile" and iconic body language. Tati's joy actually comes from an inner, poetic elegance. This elegance is reflected in the calmness of facing absurd situations. Mr. Hulot is closer to a gentleman in the true sense of the word than Chaplin's Charlot, who always shows us the absurdity of so-called "modernity" by doing things "kindly". For example, in Playtime, Mr. Hulo "deconstructed" many so-called high-tech and new inventions at the Paris World Expo. Including this film, which is arguably the best scene scheduling in the history of world cinema, we find it interesting because it punctures the so-called modern boring. This kind of artistic thinking cannot be imitated. This can also explain Jackie Chan's example: Jackie Chan's action scenes borrow a lot from Tati's films, but they only stay on the surface of comical imitation, unable to enter the level of consciousness, and thus cannot be more "good".
Of course, Suleiman didn't have the dexterous body language of a professional athlete and pantomime actor like Tati, so he could only "stare", but he compensated for this deficiency with large close-ups, that is, with his own iconic "Kazilan Big Eyes", sometimes from the window, sometimes on the balcony, from his "Chronicle of The Vanishing Civilization" 24 years ago, only the eyes were younger and more "oriental" (the director was a standard Arab face when he was young). With the help of changes in eyebrows and eyes, he conveys a wealth of content. He gazed at the overactive native neighbors who "rewarded for their confused behavior", who entered and exited his yard at will, especially picking his lemons without treating themselves as outsiders, and of course helping him prune the branches; they urinated and fought in the streets at will, and ate the overlord meal in the tavern; but Paris was not more "civilized", and it was also absurd, and the absurdity of the hometown was the absurdity of no one and no sense of space between people. In the West, there is a sense of absurdity between people: men snatch a chair in public places where they can rest, completely ignoring the elderly and children; strong men in the subway follow him into the gate to escape tickets, and so on.
However, however! It should be noted that all these expressions of his are not fierce criticisms, but, like Tati, they are poetic! Even the Police in Paris, wearing roller skates to catch suspects, are photographed as gracefully as speed skaters (though at the same time parody of the Western way of "uniformity"),, and another example is the emoticon scene in which he interacts with the bird: a cute gray bird falls on the desk and constantly harasses the director who writes in an Apple notebook, as if a boring lover, repeatedly asking: "Do you see me cute?"? So the big eyes that couldn't bear it got up and pointed out the window, and the birds flew out this time, but with the sight of the big eyes, we were surprised to see several beautiful geometric lines, slowly melting in the sky - is it the trace of a bird? Or is it left behind by the military parade air show? But that's not important anymore.
Perhaps Suleiman is closer to another world-class master of cinema, Fajac Tati: Ota Ioseriani, a Georgian director from the Soviet Union who later integrated into France and a representative of "poetic films", is also a person who uses "poetry" to break through from various "identity politics".
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So, how can the poetry of the film be understood at a cognitive level?
First of all it means deconstruction, deconstructing what? It is the stubborn habit that we take for granted that every time we see an image, we cannot wait to explain its "meaning", and always think that it is "metaphorical" or "symbolic" of something, because once we do this, the beauty or mystery of art disappears. Only stereotypical theorists use the symbols of mathematical thinking to "interpret" visual art. Suleiman himself said: "Pure poetic imagery, hiding a huge and complex meaning, is an essential element of human communication. The audience can almost interpret the film with the director. Because there is no "authoritative" interpretation of the director, they can understand the images they see at will. Meaning does not exist before the interpretation of images, meaning comes only from the interpretation of different forms, different ethnic groups and different groups. You have to emancipate your mind to produce meaning."
The cloud, for example, doesn't necessarily have to "symbolize" anything, it just provides a space for multiple interpretations. We can certainly link the Christian view that the bird does not fall on the heads of the bad guys, thereby interpreting this cloud of the sky as some kind of revelation or freedom, etc., but it offers more poetry—where the poetry lies, it means the disappearance or weakening of some single, absolute truth.
True poetry, especially the poetry of images, is universal, and it is not like McDonald's, where the hot end comes out and can be digested by us. That would only reinforce the dominant discourse, and thus mean identifying with and taming political or economic identity, like the taxi driver in New York in the film, who is excited and overreacting to carrying a "Palestinian", and like the absurd logic of the French producer: We have sympathy for Palestine, we certainly don't want to make a didactic, exotic film, but your film is not Palestinian enough, so we can't do it.
So, does this mean that the director of "Must Be Heaven" is "non-political", "non-ideological", or even "pure art" and "art for art's sake"? I am afraid that this perception is even worse.
Poetic, not a mediocre "reproduction" or "reflection". On the contrary, it frees us from some kind of imaginary, deceptive nostalgia, and there is nothing that forces us to "move." Poetic expression in no way means declaring, "You see I have no ideology," which is pure nothingness and the abject poverty of thought. Poetic means that instead of imposing his position on the viewer, the author opens it in an elegant way—as if nothing is said, but everything is actually said. Here in Suleiman, it is often accompanied by cold humor.
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So what is his "position" on Palestine? For this expatriate who has long lived in New York and Paris, is his hometown also a thing of imagination? Aren't those Palestinian scenes in the first third of the film full of all kinds of "black material"? But this is the way he opens his hometown, and it is also the way his hometown opens to him, and we will not forget the Palestinian woman who walked gracefully in the forest with water on her head, which was the most poetic and beautiful moment in the whole film. Can you see the tenderness in the eyes of the big eyes at this time?
"Must be heaven" is an intertextual with the film master Ernst Liu Beiqian's masterpiece "Heaven Is Waiting", liu Beiqian's film's paradise is actually these beautiful times we have, where is "must be heaven"? The fortune teller told Big Eyes, "Probably Palestine, but you and I may not see it," and when he heard this, Big Eyes was still happy— he returned to Palestine. Here is the space in which he can mentally rest, or, in Nietzsche's words, his "cave", the Persian Zarathustra returned from the big city to his "cave" in the valley: "Ten years later, you have come here, to my cave, and without me, without my eagle and the serpent, you will slowly get tired of this light, this road, right?" Didn't the director's neighbor, the old man who urinated at his door in the rain and scolded his son, also tell him a story of "eagle and snake"? The eagle and the serpent of Zarathustra are a combination of wisdom and flesh, and the old man also tells the story of the serpent's retribution. Didn't the lemon tree that the director transplanted from a flowerpot to the yard when he went to China come alive under the care of the neighbor who had "no spatial consciousness"? Not only that, but it also bears fruitful fruits. At this moment, it is heaven.
Text | Hei Zeming Editing | Chen Kaiyi
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