Directed by: Emad Burnat & Guy Davidi.
Emad
Burnat is a Palestinian villager who has spent his whole life in his small
village of Bil’in. He gets a camera on the occasion of his fourth son’s birth
so he can document his son’s life. Emad, and seemingly everyone else is Bil’in,
isn’t really political. They live a simple life, and are happy. All they really
want is for things to stay the same. But when the Israeli government decides
that they need to build a barrier – to separate villagers like Bil’in from the
Israeli settlement near by, the people of Bil’in are not happy – and they start
to protest. Their protests are non-violent – basically just the entire village
going to the construction site of the barrier every Friday with signs and chanting
at the workers and Israeli army member there. The Israeli response is not
non-violent – he sees his friends and family arrested or beaten, and throughout
the course of his movie, he will have five different cameras that he has used
to document the protests destroyed.
The
story that 5 Broken Cameras tells is undeniably powerful and important. The
film is narrated by Burnat, who tells his story over the images his cameras
caught. Professional filmmaker – and Israeli – Guy Davidi co-directed the film,
one assumes to help give it a professional polish that Burnat, who says he knew
nothing about filmmaking, would be incapable of giving. Had the two simply let
the images speak for themselves, and cut back on the cloying narration, this
could have been a great documentary. As it stands, I could not help but think
that I was being manipulated throughout the entire running time of the
documentary. The sad thing is, the filmmakers didn’t need to do that. In this
case, it is hard to defend Israel’s actions – but I still don’t like the
filmmakers bashing me over the head over and over again with their rather
obvious point.
Take
for instance a scene in which Burnat’s youngest son, Gibreel, who must be at
most 3 at the time, goes up to an Israeli soldier and literally hands him an
olive branch (olives being the main crop
of the area). The film shows this, without narration, as if it was a natural,
spur of the moment gesture by the wide eyed innocent Gibreel. But the whole
scene reeks of a setup – I wonder just how long Gibreel needed to be coached
before he did that?
The
same sort of manipulation can be seen throughout the movie. Burnat and Davidi
never tire of showing us wide eyed, innocent children to go along with their
cloying narration that never really shares any real insight into what is
happening, but is there to pull at the audience’s heartstrings.
Which
is sad, because the story of the Bil’in protests is an important one. We hear
stories of violent clashes between Israel and Palestine – and more often, Israel
and its neighbors – far too often. The villagers in Bil’in are not trying to
wipe Israel off the map, they just want to be left alone in their village, so
they can raise their own families in peace. Their protests are peaceful, and
what Israel does in response is overkill.
But
5 Broken Cameras remains a film that isn’t really interested in presenting a
fair and balance picture of what happened. Instead, they insist on beating its
point into your head over and over again, in the most broadly sentimental way
imaginable. It’s too bad. The filmmakers didn’t need to go this route to make a
good film. In fact, they would have been much better served if they hadn’t.
This is a sad enough story that the filmmakers needn’t have tried so hard to
pull at your heartstrings.
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