Tikkun Magazine, November/December 2005

MOVIE REVIEW

In the Name of the Father

by Shai Ginsburg

• Thirst (Atash), directed by Tawfik Abu Wael. 2004, Global Film Initiative. American release, 2006.

In a deserted, unnamed IDF installation, where exposed gray concrete walls marked by bullet holes blend into the barren yellow dusty landscape, Abu Shukri and his family—the unlawful occupants of the site—make a meager living by turning illegally cut wood into charcoal. In Tawfik Abu Wael's beautiful film Atash (Thirst), however, this loaded setting forms the backdrop for an unusual story about the way violence and abuse are ingrained within the life of a family and perpetuated by its victims.

It has been ten years since Abu Shukri moved his wife and children from the nearby town, never to return. The small valley that encloses the military installation cuts his family off from the outside world, protecting them from the scandal that chased them out of their village. At the same time, from the very beginning, the desolate valley is revealed to be prison-like. In it, Abu Shukri is able to maintain tight control over his family members, forcing them into seclusion. Consumed by the almost-constant need to supervise the charcoal fire (the importance of which Abu Shukri continually reiterates), the members of the family are not only barred from realizing their dreams, but ultimately lose their ability to imagine a new life possible beyond the valley's walls.

In the first scene of Atash, as Abu Shukri's family shuttles between a water tank—the only source of water—and the fire, Abu Shukri's son defies his father and runs off to school. Enraged, Abu Shukri breaks the tank and states: "I'm fed up. I want tap water like everyone else." Ironically, Abu-Shukri's love and care for his family and his endeavors both to shield his family and to keep it together result in thirst. Accordingly, when he uses all the family savings to construct a pipeline, it only reinforces the fetters that ties them to the valley, because, as Abu Shukri's wife, Um Shukri notes, they could have rented a house anywhere with this money. In fact, throughout the film, every attempt to escape ultimately reinforces the family's inability to change it's fortunes.

The construction of the pipeline brings some relief to Abu Shukri's family, but they soon find that they have to protect it from being sabotaged. This responsibility draws father and son together. Taking a gun out of its hiding place, Abu Shukri initiates his son into its rituals and responsibilities, as well as fears about "becoming a man." Appropriately, the gun maintains its attraction as a symbol of power and authority, even though Shukri is far from certain that he would be able to bring himself to use it should the need arise. The film's tragedy is derived from the fact that, as the son increasingly assumes this impossibly conflicted masculine responsibility, he both rebels against the tyranny of the father and assumes the same values and attitudes that inform that tyranny.

Yet, it is not only the inherent ambiguity of characters and events that makes the moral categorization of the film's characters and their actions so difficult. It is also, as the first scene of Atash reveals, the logic of displacement that shapes its narrative. Events are not linked as a sequence of cause and effect, but rather are presented as a chain of substitutions of one idea for another in which the emotional intensity of one idea becomes detached from it and is passed to another idea. The series of substitutions is indeed so dense that it is often difficult to uncover the true motivations behind the behavior of Atash's characters.

The most obvious example of such displacement deals with the relationship between Israeli military and political systems, and their Israeli-Palestinian subjects. While the film, with its focus on a Palestinian family's intense interpersonal relationships, never presents a direct encounter between Palestinians and the Israeli authorities, there is no doubt that Israeli presence shapes and molds the life of the Palestinian family and, to a certain extent, the pattern of victimization of the characters. Indeed, the very physical setting in which the film takes place points to Israel's powerful presence—even in its absence. Against the protest of his neighbor, who argues that he "fucks with an old dick," Abu Shukri proudly declares that he defies the Israeli act of land appropriation from its lawful Palestinian owners; nevertheless, the fear of an encounter with the Israeli authorities, which would result in the expulsion of the family from their home, continuously lingers in the background. In fact, the deserted military outpost had served to train Israeli soldiers in urban fighting strategies and thus forms a silent reminder of the brutal nature of the encounter between Israelis and Palestinians.

Yet in Atash, traditional cinematographic images of national conflict work counter-intuitively. Instead of representing clearly identifiable clashing forces, they uncover how political violence and abuse are internalized and become inherent to the very lives of the film's characters, independent of the Israeli presence. The covered faces of the characters, in which only eyes peek between a pulled sweater and a cap, are only too reminiscent of recent photos of Palestinian militiamen, though they are explained away by the characters' need to not inhale the thick smoke of a charcoal fire. Halima, Abu-Shukri's younger daughter, collects the empty rifle shells and hand grenade safety latches—signs of the violence that makes possible Israeli rule over Palestinians—that litter the ground, and weaves them into wind harps that she hangs above the entrance door. Rather than "beat swords into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks," these shells and latches are turned into an eerie image of the incorporation of violent reality into the life of the Palestinian family. They serve moreover to symbolize the failure of the Palestinians to transform their unlawful presence in this military outpost into an act that would affirm some measure of hope beyond violence.

Unlike films that depict both national and familial conflicts in terms that are dynamic, the complex images that Atash presents its viewer are oppressively static. Assaf Sudry's striking cinematography, reminiscent of Sergei Parajanov's Color of Pomegranates and Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Gabbeh, produces hauntingly beautiful images, far more so than other Israeli films. Yet the allure of these images is deceiving. Instead of pointing to a realm transcendent of a harsh and narrow material reality, what they communicate is the impossibility of breaking away from it. It is in representing this synthesis of beauty and oppression that Atash's greatest achievement lies.

Thirst (Atash) will be released across the U.S. in 2006 through the Global Lens film series presented by The Global Film Initiative. Check their website for dates and venues: www.globalfilm.org.

Shai Ginsburg is the Jess Schwartz Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature at Arizona State University.

Source Citation

Ginsburg, Shai. 2005. In the name of the father. Tikkun 20(6):75.