Parky At the Pictures (31/10/2025)

(Reviews of Palestine 36; and It Doesn't Get Any Better Than This)

PARADISE 36.

For some time now, Annemarie Jacir has been the most eloquent and considered voice in Palestinian cinema. Now, following on from Salt of the Sea (2007), When I Saw You (2012), and Wajib (2017), she has attempted her largest scale and most politically ambitious picture to date. Yet, for all its epic significance, Palestine 36, has an intimacy that makes it compel as a human drama, as well as impress as an historical reconstruction.

Following evocative period footage, Yusuf (Karim Daoud Anaya) descends a train in Ramallah to work in Jerusalem as a chaufeur to Amir (Dhafer L'Abidine), whose wife, Khuloud (Yasmine Al Massri), has been forced to adopt a male nom de plume in order to publish in Palestine. As newsreels report on the influx of Jews from Europe as persecution in Germany increases, British High Commissioner, Arthur Wauchope (Jeremy Irons), launches the first Palestinian radio station and hopes that it can foster cultural collaboration and help farmers make the most of their lands.

Yusuf comes from the village of Al Basma, where he has grown fond of widowed neighbour, Rabab (Yafa Bakri), in spite of the disapproval of her parents, Hanan (Hiam Abbas) and Abu Rabab (Kamal El Basha). He brings stamps for her young daughter, Afra (Wardi Eilabouni), who is a great watcher and asker of questions and who has befriended, Kareem (Ward Helou), the young son of a Christian priest, Father Bolous (Jalal Altawil). They would rather keep to themselves, but this is becoming increasingly unlikely, as the Jewish migrants are well organised and get better jobs and pay down on the Jaffa docks, even though the authorities keep finding guns being smuggled in barrels for a takeover. Stung by being exploited, Khalid (Saleh Bakri) begins to understand the perniciousness of colonialism.

In order to resist the economic effects of the incursion, the Arab workers call a general strike. Led by Khalid, freedom fighters also start collecting valuables and cash from train passengers to fund the resistance. But things get worse, as the settlers demand land and the British give them what they want and impose a new registration system on the Palestinians. Wauchope's secretary comes to explain the changes, but the sense of grievance is heightened when Yusuf's father is shot dead during a nocturnal expedition to the tented settlement on the edge of the village and while the people are still mourning, a British patrol under Captain Orde Wingate (Robert Aramayo) comes looking for bandits who have been attacking the settlers (even though there is no reciprocal help when the Zionists start fires in the fields). Soldiers rough-up the womenfolk before bundling a random boy into their car, who just happens to be Yusuf's brother.

Having encountered Yusuf at a social events at Amir's house, Wingate picks on him when he distributes watcr to desperate women without permission and has one of his men punch him in the face. He is also rude to Hopkins when he finds him chatting to Khuloud in a street café. Wingate tries to belittle her, but she flings an Oxford degree in his face and he informs Hopkins that he will be thrilled when the first Jewish army since biblical times rules over the Holy Land.

Khuloud leads a delegation to see Wauchope and he promise them that the Peel Commission will give them a sympathetic hearing. But she is not convinced and isn't surprised when Hopkins confides that the British are turning a blind eye to the Jewish insurgency forces. Her editor husband warns her to be more discreet in her articles, but she continues to write what she wants.

She resents that propaganda pieces are being written in her paper and vow to win the argument. Rabab witnesses a bomb blast in town while selling vegetables and is dismayed when she catches Kareem with an antique Turkish pistol and manages to hide during a bus search. She hides it at home, only for Afra to find it and get a lecture from her grandmother on keeping control of their land in the right way. Kareem is embarrassed when his father is stopped and mocked by British soldiers, who steal their money. He sees frescoes of heroic deeds in the church and wonders why the people don't fight back. When the British go for a picnic in the hills, he is invited along and runs after the ball when it is kicked into the rocks and he finds a pistol hidden in a hole and it excites him.

The Palestinians do fight back, the moment the Peel Commission decides upon a partition without a Palestinian state that enables the formation of a Jewish homeland that will be protected from the Arabs. Hopkins feels betrayed and Wingate taunts him with being a bad loser when Charles Tegart (Liam Cunningham) comes to brief Wauchope on how to divide and rule. Khuloud (who has discovered that her husband is in cahoots with the Jewish Commission) also feels cheated and is furious with Hopkins after the offices of her paper are raided.

He quits and leaves Wingate to go on a spree after a tank is blown up on patrol. The village is raided and the menfolk bundled on to a bus that blows up at the edge of the road. Wingate uses Kareem to force Father Boulos into surrendering the arms cache in the crypt and he is humiliated. Rabab tells Afra to run iinto the hills, where Yusuf is ambushed by a patrol. He manages to throw a grenade, but i shot and arrested. With the village in flames. Kareem takes his pistol and shoots at a soldier near his father's old church.

Time passes and Yusuf is released from prison. Khuloud gives her wedding ring back to her husband and joins a protest march in the street - which contains echoes of the existing situation in the Occupied Territories. As the credits roll, a lone piper plays on a hill overlooking what had once been a thriving community.

Reminding us that history is as much about people as events, Jacir has provided a timely y and poignant account of the Palestinian experience in 1936. However, history rarely has a singular perspective and, while the decision to leave the settlers and their game plan in the shadows is understandable, it has a distorting effect that reduces the film's value as an overview. The clichéd depiction of the British (who hardly covered themselves in glory) further has an enervating effect and risks reducing the Palestinians to victims of serial injustices.

Those without a core knowledge of the situation are going to struggle to follow the action, as there is little exposition - and why should there be? The Palestinian people know what they lived though and it's not the film-maker's duty to hand-hold those unaware of the intricacies and complexities of the League of Nations mandate. Instead, Jacir offers shrewd comments on the Palestinian class system and the differences between town and country dwelling. She does so by presenting us with adroitly realised and earnestly played individuals, who have families to protect, jobs to hold down, and crops to gather, while also seeking to defend the land that had been occupied by their ancestors for centuries. The line about the years of endeavour and care that went into the creation of the terraced steps hits home hard, as the British plan for land registration and redivision had no room for such niceties.

Impeccably dressed by costume designer Hamada Atallah, Yasmine Al Massri gives the standout performance as the journalist fighting sexism within her own society, although Yafa Bakri combines compassion with quiet courage as the widow whose every hour is filled. It might have been nice to see more of her famous brother, Saleh Bakri, as the radicalised docker. But, as is the case with Hiam Abbass, his presence alone helps give the picture legitimacy. Let's hope it gets seen, possibly in tandem with Cherien Dabis's All That's Left of You, which examines the equally harsh truths of the postwar Nakba.

IT DOESN'T GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS.

It's always dangerous for a film title to make a boast that the ensuing action simply cannot back up. Take the case of It Doesn't Get Any Better Than This, a found-footage horror from debuting directors, Rachel Kempf and Nick Toti. Ambitiously blending documentary and staged footage, this has laudable ambition for its modest budget. But, in seeking to pay homage to Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez's The Blair Witch Project (1999), the

married neophytes have succeeded only in creating a pastiche that is short on inspiration and scares.

Nick and Rachel have married each other twice. Yet he still feels intimidated by the closeness of her relationship with her gay friend, Christian. Having always made DIY horror shorts, the pair decide to make a feature and spend $30,000 on a dilapidated duplex in Kirksville, Missouri to double as their home and studio. Agreeing to dot the action with existing footage from Rachel's past, they entrust the camera to Nick and he also provides the narration for the introductory prologue, in which he recalls filming Rachel and Christian holding séances before and they feel confident that something will manifest itself in this spooky old house.

Keeping the camera rolling, Nick explores the basement and finds Satanic messages on the wall, syringes, old Victorian family photos, and some doors that look like they have been smashed open with an axe. Rachel is thrilled and is relieved that there was no child pornography among the finds. She feels guilty throwing stuff away, as it was part of someone's life. But Nick is more worried by the hooded figures who keep standing outside the house and staring. Rachel gets spooked when she pulls a child's painting off a window to find a girl peering in from the street.

Nick turns out to know one of the visitors and Brent (Brent Cook) tells him that people can be a bit eccentric around here. He's given a guided tour of the wall slogan, one of which reads, `It Doesn't Get Any Better Than This'. Brent admires their pluck for taking on the property and wishes them well in their ghost hunting. This proceeds at Christmas, when Rachel buys Nick a ladder so he can climb into the attic. This is largely joists and insulation, but they find a small altar with a candle in the middle and a suicide belt hanging over a rafter. Rachel cackles with glee at the discovery, but she also confides that she has been having nightmares, in which ghosts have been trying to warn her of the malevolent spirits. She is also worried in a practical sense about the toxicity of the house and how dangerous it would be to film a séance in the rickety attic. Nick concurs that the place can give him the creeps, even though they have made it a lot homelier.

On New Year's Eve, Christian arrives with a lot of drugs and Rachel is pleased, but wary not to be too wasted in case something happens. The friends joke about repeating Candyman's name and screen some of their early shorts, including Slut Baby Slut (2009). Rachel objects when Christian tries to shut her in a dark room, but she enjoys the scare when Nick gives them the slip to don a ghost sheet and position the camera to get their reaction. Climbing into the attic, they find the candle lit on the altar and Rachel and Christian sit opposite each other trying to summon a spook. After a couple of minutes, the candle goes out and a loud bellowing noise fills the air. They scarper quickly, but are pleased to have made contact with the other side - but nothing explains the painting of black hooded figures seemingly standing at a portal entrance and Rachel and Nick's yammered explanations get them nowhere.

She loves the mural and films herself on her phone beside it. When the staring people return, Rachel goes down to chat to them, but they remain in their trances and she is baffled by what they are doing. Christian has broken off contact since New Year and he has a blazing phone row with Rachel when she calls to say that blurry Polaroid of his apartment has appeared in cellar. Nick has rigged up CCTV cameras. but images prove elusive.

One night, Rachel follows a female starer (Kaitlyn Kelly) and notices that she comes out of her trance and becomes defensive about being followed. She sobs for them to stop, but she refuses to explain what she had been doing outside the house. Returning home, Nick has a vomiting jag because the adrenaline is doing odd things to him and, while he reassures Rachel that he wants to go on with the film, he is feeling physically strained by the intensity of the process.

A few nights later, Rachel calls the cops because there are so many starers. She sits by the portal painting while Nick greets the officers, who tell him to put the camera down. They say they same to someone inside the house and Nick realises that the spirit has been filming them and he crashes through the house to find the candle alight on the attic altar. On coming downstairs, however, he sees that everyone has gone, including Rachel. In a panic, he dashes through the streets calling to her, but she seems to have vanished. With the CCTV cameras missing and the cops sure that the incident passed off peaceably, Nick is baffled and keeps searching for Rachel. After six months alone with her pining white poodle, he decides to paint over the portal. But, when he enters the room, he finds it full of clutter, including an old video cassette. Playing this, Nick gets the impression that Rachel was lured inside and the film ends with what appears to be Nick also being caught in the vortex - even though the footage he had been watching was pre-recorded.

If this showstopping finale doesn't quite come off, there's still plenty to admire about a film of undoubted intelligence and ingenuity. Kempf and Toti make a virtue of the homemade feel by beating the audience to the joke and by committing to the conceit as the characters on screen. The acting isn't always particularly persuasive, but Kempf consistently conveys her enthusiasm for a project that doesn't feel remotely dangerous until it suddenly does.

Curiously, it's not a set-piece staged within the house that changes the tone, but a borrowing from Yoko Ono and John Lennon's Rape (1969), an avant-garde short in which the relentless pursuit of a camera causes a young woman (Eva Majlath) to suffer a breakdown. Revealing a side of Rachel we had not suspected, this sequence also reinforces the eeriness of the sidewalk vigil, as it's never explained what the starers are doing there or what impact their presence has on the neighbours - who are notable by an absence that suggests either they know what took place in the house (something it doesn't seem to strike Rachel or Nick to ask) or consider the newcomers to be as kooky as the previous occupants. Only Brent offers any insight and he limits himself to a single visit, the same as Christian, whose personality never develops from the description given in the opening voiceover by a husband who isn't quite comfortable with his wife's closeness to the drug-hoovering gay man she has known forever.

Christian's failure to pick up on Rachel's tone when he persists in trying to lock her in a darkened room provides one of the film's most unsettling scares, all the more so because so little is made of it. By contrast, the prolonged séance silence and the ear-splitting cacophony that follows it feel more consciously staged. Indeed, the documentary moments are much more intriguing, as they offer unguarded insights into the twice-married pair who clearly aren't quite what they seem.

Strictly speaking, this isn't a found-footage film, as Nick and Rachel were meticulously working on their film as they went along - although he would come to regret the project: `I wish I never filmed any of it.' However, we are left with the disconcerting question of who added the final scene, as Nick would seem to have been otherwise occupied.