Reviewed By Simon Zhou

The Time That Remains
dir. Elia Suleiman

ABSURDLY COMIC, politically scathing, and utterly brilliant.  Elia Suleiman’s satirical farce of the Israel-Palestine conflict is an acerbic, implacable film, finding absurd comedy in the tumult and oppression of occupation. 

Like the bastard child of Buster Keaton and Theo Angelopolous, The Time That Remains is sharply political.  An Israeli military tank sits outside the house of a civilian, its elephantine trunk of artillery following a single young man as he talks on his cellphone; elsewhere in the notoriously conservative state, a cab-driver’s sun visor keeps falling down no matter what he does to try to keep it up, revealing a scruffy image of a scantily clad woman.  Such is the charm of Suleiman’s third feature film: its set-pieces, often absurd, are so simple that even if you were not aware of the underlying contexts or criticisms of the Israel-Palestine conflict, there is much that tickles and delights.  Divided into three time periods, from the creation of the Israel state in 1948 to the relative period stability after 1970 to the stubborn absurdities of present day, its conceits, and farcical tableaus, are essentially human.  In deconstructing the differences between the oppressors and the oppressed through comedy, we see those on both sides as nothing other than human.

The Time That Remains is also at times, incredibly personal.  Although structured as a collection of comic vignettes that show a collective experience of the conflict, the vignettes are seen through the eyes of a single family, based on Suleiman’s own.  Suleiman himself appears in the film, first as a child in the 1970 segment, then as an adult (played by the director himself) in the present day segment.    Told from a Palestinian point of view and dedicated to his parents, Suleiman channels his frustrations in the form of simple ironies: the character of Suleiman in the film never speaks after he is reprimanded at school for calling America colonialist, and then imperialist; his family is later served by a Japanese maid who speaks English (touching both on the idea of America’s initial aid of Israel as motivated by imperialist agenda, and its present day status as a ‘maid’ of Israel) and a cleaner who is also a policeman (a lament that the police can do nothing to prevent the Israel-Palestine mess, but only ‘clean up’ after the fact).  Other absurd metonyms recur, the farcical nature of the situations (a neighbour who douses himself with petrol but is unable to set himself a light because the matches are wet) belying the deeply tragic undertones which have inspired the satire.

Rather than revealing its truths through the mundane, The Time That Remains expresses the struggle of living an ordinary life in the turmoil of oppression as a state of being sedated, its absurd repetitions ultimately giving comfort in their repeated familiarity.  Through most of the film, characters are simply caricatures, and Suleiman’s shot choices in using flat, brightly lit symmetrical frames without cutting, remind one of political cartoon comic strips.  But its ocular stubbornness gives way towards the end, giving us scenes that are sadly poignant.  Waiting in the car whilst his son is in the chemist, Suleiman’s father falls asleep to an old Palestianian pop song; a memento of life before the Israeli occupation.  He never wakes up;  Suleiman’s aunt, who is blind from watching too much television, hears the sound of fireworks and mistakes it for artillery.  There is pathos in these moments, in all of the film’s sketches, no matter how funny or absurd.  The credits song is a disco remix of the Beegee’s ‘Stayin’ Alive’, and I think this is his point. Suleiman makes the circumstances of oppression comic – arguing that it is our ability to laugh which allows us to stay alive despite it all.  And to not only live, but to laugh - is the greatest form of dissent.