Ajami is not a linear film, and you are not in Hollywood by a million miles. A Bedouin Mafioso walks into an Arabic café in a very poor neighbourhood in Jaffa and when the owner refuses to pay “protection” money, begins shooting the place up with an automatic. The owner responds by taking out his own gun and shooting the Bedouin.
The resulting vendetta devolves upon a nephew of the café owner, one of the main characters who must pay the Bedouin’s family an outrageous amount of reparation money. This amount is decided by a neutral “judge” in a Bedouin tent. This is one of the many plots and sub-plots in this amazing work.
The acting was so natural it did not seem to be performed, but had an almost mesmerizing documentary quality. The stories were divided into chapters, but even the chapters were not really linear. They finally all came together in a terrifying climax with the dimensions of Greek tragedy. The film left one drained and desperate to remember the fascinating details of quotidian life in an Arabic community rarely seen before in its detail and complexity.
Much of the film takes place in Ajami, a poor Arabic neighbourhood of the ancient port city of Jaffa; which leads a duplicitous life as historical tourist attraction and neighbour of bustling Tel Aviv. It is home to Israeli Arabs who are often caught in the middle of the bigger on-going Middle East crisis. It is the ancient biblical port where the cedar trees for the temple entered the holy land, and a main tourist and disco haunt.
After the film was shown for the Cinémagique Ciné Club organized and run by Canadian film director Peter Pearson, Eran Bester (organizer of the Israeli film festival) came to the front of the house and imparted some fascinating facts about this movie.
The co-directors are both Israeli, but one is Jewish, (Scandar Copti) and the other Palestinian (Taron Shani). There are scenes with ex-policemen in the roles of policemen to which only the Jewish Israeli could have had access. The scene with the judge speaking to the Bedouins had actual Bedouins in it who were not at all aware that they were being filmed for a fictional work. It would have been impossible for a Jewish Israeli to film this.
None of the performers were actors! They had been chosen to play their roles after the script had been collaborated on, and it took three arduous months to select them. Once the actors were chosen, they had to go into a rigorous nine month training period to learn how to act naturally in front of a camera. Many of the scenes were improvised dialogue and it was so spontaneous that no one could tell these were not the most extraordinary screen performers.
Most astonishing is the seamless narrative which circles around in provocative ways, and concludes in the inevitable cathartic conclusion.
Ajami, Academy Award Nominee Best Foreign Film, is showing at the AMC Forum 22. 2313 St. Catherine St. West Suite 101, 1:00-4:00-7:00-10:00.
