Directed by the twin duo of Tarzan and Arab Nasser, “Once Upon a Time in Gaza” concerns a collaboration of a different kind: a small drug program concocted by the student of the University of Timid Yahya (Nader Abd Alhay) and the Costaud Restoration Osama (Majd Eid). Although taking place in 2007, the well -intentioned and ironic drama has a penchant to connect its framework to the contemporary political zeitgeist, which it vocalizes strongly and openly. However, its self -reflexive and bifurcated history – on the use of cinematographic images to create a revolution – ends ironically flabby.
Captured with an intention of meticulous composition, the first half of the film sees Osama, the brain of the operation, sending Yahya to acquire analgesics using forged prescriptions, which they plan to sell by hiding them in pita sandwichs of the joint of the Falafel hole in the wall of Osama. As this intrigue takes place, it is supported by the light and humorous tension of the disagreements of the duo – that the nasses allow to play at the point of absurdity – and by the corrupt police officer on the tail, Abu Sami (Ramzi Maqdisi). During all this time, newspaper titles and television stories tell increasing tensions, because Israel recently declared Gaza “hostile territory” and plans to classify them literally.
The imminent presence of this political spectrum is rarely attached to the current rigamarole, except in the minor case of Yahya prevented, by the Israeli authority, to go to the West Bank to see his mother. On the one hand, it is impossible to tell a story about modern Gaza without the changing parameters of its to come in one way or another. On the other hand, it rarely has an impact on the more important activities of the film. The moral dilemma against Osama, while Abou Sami offers him freedom in exchange for a cup, suddenly feels interrupted by each injection of the larger world, instead that the two are intertwined.
Admittedly, there is a far -fetched mine sequence which offers the film a bit a drain in the evacuation. It starts with recent audio clips by American president Donald Trump pretending to want to transform Gaza into a private riviera, alongside recent clips of shaved Gaza buildings. This, in fact, even frames the unrelated apolitical events of the film as at the mercy of this dangerous future, supported by the Western powers. However, none of the news never looks like a premonition, given their rapid and little involved appearance, rubbing an ironic intention.
There is also a bigger farce in play, although it has a while to arrive. The film’s opening images are of a small budget production filmed in the world, entitled “The Rebel”, presented as the first action film with Gaza. He plays like a joke at the beginning, but returns to the second half of the film, which almost entirely pivots the real realization of this film – on a heroic armed resistance – in which Yahya finds himself involved by a pure coincidence.
This apparent act of recent recent fate The title and images inspired by the Hollywood inspiration film. Until now, a certain number of scenes have felt inspired by the main Hollywood influences, from “pulp fiction” jokes to music that echoes the partition of Nino Rota for “The Godfather” to a surrealist close -up which reflects the opening of “Apocalypse Now”. These are not references for the reference, but rather an apparent attempt to count with the duel influence of American culture and American policy, the first helping the filmmakers of Gaza to build their images and their identities, and the last weapons of funding used to destroy them.
The film seems to move with concentration, towards the creation of revolutionaries as a cinematographic idea, but it soon rejects all these metaxual development in favor of a final act built around more acts of destiny, which ends with evil. Using a coincidence to start a story starts is one thing, but unless nihilism is the point and the goal – to the “serious man” by Coen Brothers – also using a coincidence to end a story can be incredibly unsatisfactory. This, associated with the refusal of the film to plunge fully into the desires of revenge of its characters (when things become particularly violent), makes “there was once in Gaza” more facsimile than in homage or self-reflection, and an observation more distant than rigorous and ironic life in life under occupation.
