Celia Gurevitch Jewish Community Library

On the last night of July nine of us watched FreeZone. We were still struggling with the volume issue. If I crank it up it gets distorted if I lower it, not everybody hears it. Luckily we were running the subtitles for this film. One of the viewers suggested that we should always do that, no matter no the sound quality to help the hearing impaired. We will follow this advice form now. Unfortunately there were no subtitles in this movie when the actors were speaking English, which was about third of the movie.

What a difference subtitles make, particularly in the opening. First time I saw it without subtitles, the opening scene seemed intensely long. It was a full screen profile shot of Natalie Portman, sitting in a car, running for what seemed ten minutes. Meanwhile a woman sang a beautiful song. This time I could read the lyrics and that made the whole scene full of meaning and much more exciting. It was the well-known “Chad gadya” song, sang at Passover with an extra section,

I have only asked four questions
But, tonight
I have thought of another question
How long will this hellish circle last?
I have thought of a question tonight
How long will this hellish circle last?
That of the oppressor and the oppressed,
Of the executioner and the victim
How long will this madness last?

These lines set the tone for the whole film. It is no longer the story of three women who more or less accidentally meet and travel together. They start to represent their respective nations, American, Israeli, and Palestinian. Looking at the interactions from this new perspective every single word can eb reinterpreted what it might mean in terms of the relations between these groups, as opposed to between these individuals.

I copied the lyrics above from the package (PDF file)  the film’s distributor put together. For those of you who has seen the movie I recommend to check the file out, because it includes additional information that helps gaining a deeper understanding of the movie. My favorite part was the revelative interview with Amos Gitai, the writer/director. Here are some excerpts/teasers

Does the free zone in the film actually exist?
Yes, in eastern Jordan, an area has been set up as an economic free zone. There are no customs and no taxes. People from neighboring countries like Iraq, Egypt, Syria and Israel come here to sell and buy cars….

And peace exists in this free zone?
Yes. Complete peace.

Borders play an important role in the film…
In the Middle East, borders are a real issue. It’s always physical borders, political borders, which lead to mental borders.

Did you write the role of Rebecca for Natalie Portman?
The screenplay went through a lot of transformations. The original version was written about men and at one point I decided to make it the story of three women.

The car seems to be more than just a means of transportation…
I think that the car can definitely be considered the fourth main character. It imposes a restricted territory. When the three women are in the car, or when two of them are in the car, they cannot be far from each other.

For the first time, you shot a film in Jordan…
Inititially, of course, there was a kind of resistance between the Israeli and Jordanian crews, but this melted down after only a few hours and relations became very warm. I think that just the shooting of the film is a good example of how political borders can be crossed. It was really a great experience.

For the rest read the interview for yourself. If you have not seen the movie I recommend you check it out from the library.