Conflict, paranoia, but little propaganda in ‘Omar’

Marc Mohan, Special to The Oregonian

Transcribed from the clipping

“As only the second Palestinian submission to be nominated for an Academy Award, and with a story set amid the conflict over the Occupied Territories, it’s not surprising that ‘Omar’ is a volatile film. But it’s not a specifically political one. With only superficial alteration, it could be set in Cold War Berlin, or colonial Boston, or any time and place where the dynamics of power conspire to create an atmosphere of paranoia and mistrust. The title character, played by the grimly charismatic Adam Bakri, is one of three Palestinian friends trying to make their mark in the struggle against Israeli occupation. The others are Amjad (Samer Bisharat) and Tarek (Iyad Hoorani), whose younger sister Nadia (Leem Lubany) is the object of both Omar and Amjad’s affections… Facing a 90-year sentence, Omar agrees to help bring Tarek to justice and is released from detention… The freshness of his cast’s faces (all but Zuaiter are making their feature-film debuts) and the fleshed-out humanity of their performances give the untangling of this web of deceit real emotional weight. The movie neither condemns nor lauds its characters’ behavior. Without delving into the particulars of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and remaining much more of a thriller than a piece of propaganda, Abu-Assad captures the everyday reality of life in the West Bank and the psychological cost of living constantly in a state of powerlessness and desperation. 96 min., not rated, Living Room Theaters. Grade: A-”

Context added by this archive

A four-star review that spends its headline and much of its first paragraph establishing what the film is not. Five Palestinian actors are named, four of them in their first feature. The reviewer reaches for Cold War Berlin and colonial Boston to say the story is universal, which is its own way of saying a Palestinian one would not be.

Cite this item

"Conflict, paranoia, but little propaganda in ‘Omar’," The Oregonian, 21 February 2014. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2014-019. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2014-019

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The front-runnersLos Angeles Times · 23 February 2014 · the same year
PALESTINIANS LOOK at the remains of a missile that witnesses said was fired by an Israeli aircraft on a street in Deir El-BalahHartford Courant · 12 July 2014 · the same year
Genocide in Gaza is a lie worthy of GoebbelsThe Register-Guard · 17 July 2014 · the same year

This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American and Anglophone newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1812 to 2022. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.

The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the wire service that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary. The city is derived from the masthead, not read off the clipping.

Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-2014-019.

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