The great stone face of contemporary cinema, Palestinian writer-director Elia Suleiman typically presents an amusing, Buster Keaton-ish view of the world’s absurdities. Not the whole world, mind you, but the hopeless predicament of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. Suleiman’s triumphs, Chronicle of a Disappearance and Divine Intervention, used dryly savage humor to comment on Israel’s seizure of Palestinian homes and lands (in 1948 particularly, but also since the Six-Day War of 1967) and to depict Palestinians living in a kind of suspended-animation limbo.
Those fine films were distinguished by a low-key, deadpan tone — the cinematic equivalent of a shrug, though with a bit more anger below the surface — that mocked the Palestinians (clinging to delusions of one day returning to their ancestral homes) as well as the Israelis. But the chuckles are in short supply in Suleiman’s latest, as befits its pessimistic title. The Time That Remains depicts people going through the motions and living out the string, without enthusiasm or even awareness.
The film draws on Suleiman’s family history in Nazareth, and glides from 1948 to 1970 to 1980 to the present. It portrays, in increments, the degrees by which his father’s strength and will are gradually drained by the Israelis and the Occupation. Even the young Elia is stifled and shut down emotionally, and forced to leave the Middle East as a teenager, finally returning years later. Needless to say, Suleiman’s family is meant to represent the broader Palestinian population.