By Laurie Baron
SAN DIEGO — Israeli director Eran Riklis excels at dramatizing how individuals from different nationalities or religions can forge friendships despite the hostilities and prejudices that divide them. In many ways Zaytoun (Olive Tree) is a remake of his early film Cup Final (1991). Set in Israel’s Vietnam, the Lebanese War of 1982, that movie focused on the capture of an Israeli reservist by PLO soldiers who plan to exchange him for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. In the course of shepherding him across Lebanon, they discover they share his passion for soccer and support for the Italian team in the World Cup. Similarly, in more recent Riklis films like The Syrian Bride (2004), Lemon Tree (2008), The Human Resources Manager (2010), and Playoff (2011), the personal triumphs over the political.
Zaytoun returns the director to the war in Lebanon. A downed Israeli pilot named Yoni (Stephen Dorff) is apprehended by the PLO. A bond develops between Yoni and a Palestinian youth nicknamed Zico (Abdallah El Akal) who is assigned to guard him. Zico lives a bifurcated life playing games with his friends while receiving military training from the PLO to free Palestine. Since his father died in an Israeli bombing raid, he hates Yoni. Nevertheless, Zico must also cope with daily harassment and sniper-fire from Christian Phalangists who kill his best friend.
If you’re wondering why Lebanese Christians are as hostile towards Palestinians as the Israelis are, you are probably not alone. Riklis assumes more background knowledge from audiences than most viewers possess. The brief prologue to the film does not provide sufficient context to understand why Maronite Christians were trying to retain the political dominance accorded them based on a census conducted in 1934.
By the 1970s the Sunni and Shiite populations outnumbered them, and the fragile system of proportional denominational representation unraveled with the influx of PLO guerillas expelled from Jordan in 1971. Five years later Syria intervened in the Lebanese Civil War to restrain the PLO and assert its influence over Lebanese politics. Since the PLO staged raids on Israel from Lebanon, Israel countered with reprisal bombings and supported a proxy Christian militia in southern Lebanon. The insertion of documentary footage with narration or newspaper headlines might have clarified the reasons for the animosities between the Palestinian refugees and the Lebanese Maronite
Yoni and Zico become unlikely allies when Yoni promises to smuggle Zico into Israel so he can travel to his father’s village and plant an olive tree next to the home he had fled in 1948. Like many Palestinians, Zico carries the key to his father’s ancestral house. Zaytoun transitions from a war film in the dangerous and devastated streets of Beirut into a road movie about how the pilot and the child-soldier circumvent Phalangist and PLO checkpoints to cross over the Israeli border and fulfill Zico’s dream.
The journey alternates between funny, poignant, and tense sequences as the two discover they have more in common than they ever imagined. The Bee Gees’ “Staying Alive” serves as humorous source music as they ride in a commandeered taxi during part of their odyssey. The most poignant moment comes when they happen upon an abandoned Water Park and Zico momentarily experiences what it is to be a carefree kid again. Yet there is always the danger that they will be arrested and possibly executed by Christian or Palestinian soldiers.
What makes the film so engaging is the superb performances Riklis coaxes out of Dorff and El Akal. For most of the film, they remain distrustful of each other and retaliate for the injustices each has endured at the hands of the other and of his respective nation. Yet both have lost parents in the protracted conflict between their peoples and have an abiding love for the same land whose borders, cities, and name differ on Israeli and Palestinian maps.
The ending is hopeful. In this Zaytoun joins a number of recent Israeli films like A Bottle in the Gaza Sea and The Other Son (2012) that have posed the possibility of personal reconciliation as a prelude to final peace. If these olive branches are to flourish, both sides will have to work considerably harder to nurture them.
Opening October 25, Ken Cinema (One Week Only)