Sight&Sound - 05.2020

REVIEWS

May 2020 | Sight&Sound | 73

In the US, too, many gags, however elegantly
staged, feel wearily obvious: a New York where
everyone, even the hip bourgeoisie, carries arms,
from handguns to bazookas. There’s a painful
encounter with a gauche African-American taxi
driver, amazed to meet a real Palestinian (“My
man’s from Nazareth... Jesus of Nazareth!”). It is
in New York that Palestine really comes home
to Elia: in Central Park, he sees police chase a
young woman, a Femen protester with angel
wings, breasts painted with the Palestinian
flag; and glumly sits on a panel at ‘the Arab-
American Forum for Palestine’, where no one
gets to talk because the audience clapping takes
too long. He then seeks insight from a tarot
reader who tells him, “There will be Palestine...
But it ain’t gonna happen in your lifetime.”
Suleiman’s persona as a peripatetic observer
of the world’s madness gives continuity to the
film’s content and its highly formal style, with
Elia at the centre of a string of episodes presented

in stripped-down, sometimes symmetrical mise

en scène. Now white-bearded and professorial in

glasses and hat, Elia – with his Hulot-like habit of

holding his hands behind his back – is a solitary

onlooker rather than a participant, and always

silent (except in the New York cab where he

announces, “I’m Palestinian”). But in this film, the

character, at first the familiar quizzical innocent,

can also seem tetchy and disapproving – notably

in that unfortunate Japanese scene, but also in

one where, going through a check at a New York

airport, he grabs the official’s metal detector,

uses it for some impossible, CGI-aided martial

arts moves (recalling the Palestinian ninja in

Suleiman’s 2002 film Divine Intervention) and

walks on with a look of righteous contempt.

The consistent theme of It Must Be Heaven is that

the world, not just Elia’s home, is a funny place,

but the film is funny in a way that feels tired,

often mirthless, and – as reflected in his screen

persona – just a little testily supercilious.

A tale of three cities: Elia Suleiman

After a series of encounters in his home town of

Nazareth, Palestinian film-maker Elia Suleiman

flies to Paris, where he attempts to write a

script and has a project rejected by a producer.

He then visits New York, where he sees a Femen

protester chased by police; attends a film class

and a conference; meets actor Gael García Bernal;

and consults a tarot reader. Returning home,

he sits in a club watching a crowd of young

people dance.

Produced by

Edouard Weil

Laurine Pelassy

Elia Suleiman

Thanassis Karathanos

Martin Hampel

Serge Noël

Written by

Elia Suleiman

Director of

Photography

Sofian El Fani

Editor

Véronique Lange

Production Designer

Caroline Adler

Sound Recording

Johannes Doberenz

Costumes

Alexia Crisp Jones

Eric Poirier

©Rectangle

Productions, Pallas

Film, Possible

Média II, Zeyno

Film, ZDF, Turkish

Radio Television

Corporation, CN3

Productions

Production

Companies

Rectangle

Productions Nazira

Films, Pallas Films,

Possible Media,

Zeyno Film present

in association with

Doha Film Institute in

co-production with

ZDF/Arte, Turkish

Radio Television

Corporation (TRT)

In association with

Wild Bunch, Le Pacte,

Schortcut Films,

Maison 4:3, The

Arab Fund for Arts

and Culture, KNM

With the support

of Mitteldeutsche

Medienförderung,

Société de

développement des

enterprises culturelles

• Québec, Québec
  crédit d’impôt cinéma

et télévision - Gestion

SODEC, Canada

crédit d’impôt

pur la production

cinématographique

ou magnétoscopique

canadienne, Aide aux

Cinémas du Monde,

Centre National du

Cinéma et de l’Image

Animée - Institut

Français, TELEFILM

Canada, FFA -

Filmförderungsanstalt

A film by Elia Suleiman

In co-production with

CN3 Productions

With the support

of Eurimages

Executive Producers

Fatma Hassan

Alremaihi

Hanaa Issa

Cast

Elia Suleiman

ES

Tarik Kopty

Kareem Ghneim

father and son

neighbours

George Khleifi

waiter in restaurant

Ali Suliman

Faris Muqabaa

Yasmine Haj

brothers and sister

in restaurant

Nael Kanj

bishop

Asmaa Azaizy

Bedouin woman

In Colour

[2.60:1]

Subtitles

Distributor

New Wave Films

Credits and Synopsis

Reviewed by Nick Pinkerton

A string of ambiguously connected vignettes,

Anocha Suwichakornpong and Ben Rivers’s

Krabi, 2562 has a diaphanous flutter and

quicksilver evasiveness. It moves freely

between documentary and fiction modes;

when the camera lingers on mudskippers

wriggling on the beach, it might be identifying

a neither-nor kindred spirit in these

amphibious fish that can breathe in air.

Paradoxes abound. The tone is pacific, though

twice on the soundtrack the martial clack

of boots becomes audible, a reminder of the

military junta controlling the Land of Smiles.

The film unfolds according to an uncertain,

shuffled chronology. We hear a retired cinema

projectionist’s testimony about a woman’s

mysterious disappearance, then watch the

scene he’s described: earlier scenes now take on

the character of a forensic investigation. The

‘2562’ of the title has a science-fiction ring – in

fact, it is last year according to the Buddhist

calendar – while in the movie, past and present

intermingle. In addition to the evolutionary

aberration of the mudskippers, the image

of the Neanderthal recurs, as statuary and

in a pair of living, breathing primitives who

wander through this otherwise contemporary

film (the working title was In the Holocene).

The Krabi of the final title is a city on

Thailand’s southwest coast, a popular tourist

attraction and movie location. That much is

explained, though little else is, and getting a

handle on where we are moment to moment

is almost as tricky as finding images of an

authentic, unspoiled Krabi, which is what we

see various outsiders trying to do: a visitor from

central Thailand (Siraphun Wattanajinda)

who claims to be a location scout, among

other things; a bevy of tourists; and a European

commercial director (filmmaker Oliver Laxe).

These might be taken as stand-ins for the

film’s directors: Thai-born Suwichakornpong,

whose By the Time It Gets Dark (2016) was one of

the most consummately excellent, blindsiding

works of the 2010s, and the English Rivers (Two

Years at Sea, etc). It is their second collaboration,

after a short made for the Thailand Biennale

(the event is referred to here, accompanied by

a black-and-white film excerpt). It is probably

a mistake to assume parental traits, but it

can be said that Rivers supplies his eye – he

shot much of the film in Super 16, working

with DP Leung Ming Kai – while the slippery

structure shows Suwichakornpong’s fondness

for skin-shedding, shape-shifting narratives.

Suwichakornpong’s seeming impatience

with the methods of cinematic address

available to her is what makes her work worth

watching. Where By the Time It Gets Dark is about

struggling with different cinematic approaches

to grasp historic tragedy – the 1976 Thammasat

University massacre, in that case – Krabi, 2562

regards the motion-picture camera sidelong, as

a potential agent of despoliation. (Neither film

attempts to sustain a single, steady tone.) With

different tools, Suwichakornpong and Rivers are

exploring an issue that harried Robert Flaherty

through his career – the degree to which

‘discovering’ and thereby publicising a

Krabi, 2562

Thailand/United Kingdom/France/USA 2019

Directors: Ben Rivers, Anocha Suwichakornpong