Italian director Saverio Costanzo delivers a gritty and intimate drama about how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict affects a Palestinian family and the Israeli soldiers occupying their home.
Italian director Saverio Costanzo delivers a gritty and intimate drama about how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict affects a Palestinian family and the Israeli soldiers occupying their home.
Italian filmmaker Saverio Costanzo based his feature debut, Private, on a true story of a Palestinian family whose home was taken over by a platoon of Israeli soldiers. In the film, the family lives in between a Palestinian village and an Israeli settlement, making their home a strategic point for the Israelis. Mohammad (well-known Palestinian actor Mohammad Bakri, who also directed the documentary Jenin, Jenin), the schoolteacher father, refuses to let his family abandon their home, despite the
protestations of his frightened wife, Samia (Areen Omari). While the younger children seem traumatized by the invasion, eldest daughter Mariam (Hend Ayoub) can barely control her rage toward the Israelis, and is disgusted by her father's seeming passivity. The Israeli commander, Ofer (Israeli television actor Lior Miller), locks the family in their living room each night, and warns them that the second floor is off-limits, but Mariam sneaks upstairs, and is surprised at what she finds as she spies on the soldiers while hiding inside a wardrobe. The eldest son, Yusef (Amir Hasayen), is also angry, though he doesn't say much. But he's determined to make sure that the soldiers don't tear down the family's greenhouse again. Private won the Golden Leopard at the 2004 Locarno Film Festival, and was selected by the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center for inclusion in the 2005 edition of New Directors/New Films. ~ Josh Ralske, Rovi
The film's paranoia and sense of futility won't change your feelings about the Middle East. But it may open your eyes to the sense of violation that drives the endless cycle of violence there.
While the film is ultimately too limited in its scope to have much lingering impact, it does make for a thoughtful addition to the growing list of films dealing with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
The Palestinian characters are so thinly conceived that they might as well be named Victims One through Seven, and they're far more developed than the Israeli characters.
Private, Italian director Saverio Costanzo's stunning human drama, would seem like something out of Kafka if it weren't based on real events and a relatively common fact of contemporary Palestinian life.
A midnight raid by Israeli soldiers turns the home of a Palestinian family into an occupied territory in Saverio Constanzo's politically loaded allegory.
The script is occasionally heavy-handed in laying out motivation and meaning, but excellent performances from the Israeli-Palestinian cast and a chilling moral elevate this to more than 'issue film' status.
The movie is more noteworthy for the intimate suspense it brings to the subject of Israeli occupation than for any dramatic conclusion it chooses to reach.
Rather than evincing some subtlety in its depiction of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the movie's Italian makers prefer to engage in melodrama and simplistic Israel-bashing.
Not only is it a compelling and gripping drama, but it dares to take a balanced look at the conflict through the eyes of the people in the middle of it.
In "Private" a Palestinian family is not only living in the battlefield of the occupied West Bank but now they must face the additional indignity of having the Israeli army occupy their house. The army gets the second floor(under no circumstances are the family to venture there) and the family must stay downstairs.
After dark, they are confined to the living room. For the father, Mohammed, a learned, dignified man, being a refugee would be worse and he insists on staying. "Private" is a tense drama with realistic situations. The film boils the whole Arab-Israeli conflict down to a microcosm of a single house being occupied. Through the character of the father, other ways are suggested of fighting the Israeli army than violence. And the individual soldiers are not shown as being the villains. In "Down to the Bone", Irene(Vera Farmiga) is a mother to two young sons and wife to a construction worker. She works as a cashier at a supermarket in upstate New York. She is also addicted to cocaine. And she has been using since high school. After one particularly embarrassing attempt to buy drugs fails, she realizes she needs help and enters rehab. "Down to the Bone" covers some familiar ground but does so in a totally unglamorous way. The movie does not offer any easy answers or solutions. The movie is anchored by a very strong performance by Vera Farmiga.
November 26, 2005
Walter M.
Super Reviewer
This is a non artistic movie but a consiousnes of the meaning of the human fact and human issue that are behind the wars and occupation forces. Focused in the Israel-Palestine´s conflict, the italian director Saverio Constanzo makes a pretty balance film without using, the Manichean perspective and the pittyness, a
pretty good movie about the people who really are facing the conflicts. The ordinary people and the militar and human factor of the "enemy" soldiers who also carry stories and in certain way had been programed through speeches and had been involved on the army by economical necesities of their family.
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