Ajami

Ajami

120 Minutes








After winning numerous awards internationally, including a Special Distinction Award at the Cannes Film Festival, Israeli/Palestinian film Ajami is finally released theatrically in the United States, and one thing is certain- it's not an easy film to watch. Far from ladling on the misery or grotesquerie, Ajami is devastating simply through its carefully plotted and inevitable sense of ruin, each succeeding twist somehow managing to drive the film's confusion a little further. As in 2005's Crash, a series of seemingly unrelated characters slowly intersect as non-chronological chapters gradually fill in their connected lives in the Ajami district of the Israeli port of Jaffa (itself a municipality of Tel Aviv).

Ajami begins with a young boy gunned down in a street. As it turns out, it's the wrong boy. The murder (as the narrator, a child named Nasri, explains) was intended for Nasri's older brother, Omar, in retribution for another family member gunning down a member of a powerful criminal family. Meanwhile, an illegal Palestinian worker toils for funds to pay for his mother's medical costs and a Israeli police officer searches for his missing soldier brother and deals with the day to day absurdities of cop life. And that's not even half of the plot threads. Suffice it to say that writers/directors/editors Yaron Shani and Scandar Copti (who also plays a prominent role) have created a tight fabric of characters, each seemingly unrelated act somehow impinging into the lives of the unknowing others.

And that's not a mere plot device, either- the district Ajami is a dense structure of ethnically and religiously feuding cultures, Israeli, Palestinian, Jewish, Christian and Muslim, all with their own fears and prejudices. Each group seems to distrust the other, and sometimes with reason. Once begun, a cycle of violence can seem impossible to break, each revolution only ratcheting up the scale and consequences. Shani and Copti themselves are respectively Israeli and Palestinian, and their combined direction and portrayal of day-to-day life and attitudes is nothing short of astonishing. Whereas many would be satisfied to sink into political grandstanding or polemic, the pair reveals the prejudices and tension inherent in their characters' lives through realistic dialogue and interaction.

The film is not unassailable, of course. Some characters are introduced and then quickly discarded, although that could be an effect of the slice-of-life pace of the film, and certain traits, such as Nasri's careful pencil illustrations of the events of his life, seem to be without explanation or even particular symbolism. Fortunately, even such small elements are enlivened by the strength of the actors. In particular, Copti as the affable Binj shows depth in a character that could be played as a flat stoner, and Shahir Kabaha as the nominal lead, Omar, manages to portray the frustrated confusion of a young man slowly realizing the helplessness of the lot he was born in to.

One of the most frustrating aspects of the film is also the most deeply wounding. The sheer repetitive nature of interactions between characters, each unique individuals in specific circumstances, becomes so overwhelmingly obvious that it becomes a cultural force, a modus operandi for everyone to fall back upon. Negotiation and discussion never seems an option; even a scene of arbitration over revenge shootings boils down to shouting matches and one-sided financial haggling. Characters constantly revert to platitudes as a method of disguising helplessness, or simply argue in shouts until violence erupts. "Insh'Allah" or "God willing" was the single most common phrase spoken.

Although they are quite literally worlds apart, Ajami reminded me ultimately of John Singleton's Boyz n the Hood; both are films set in impoverished cityscapes, populated by characters crippled economically and stunted by lack of opportunity. As in '90s South Central Los Angeles, the young men and women of Ajami are victims of their environments, formed into adults by cultural forces of fear and violence before they have any chance to realize what's happened to them. They're both worlds in which nothing seems more important that never admitting weakness, or in which the greatest act of violence rules the day. Some things don't seem to change from place to place.

by Nathan Kamal