The most effective entry in Amos Gitai’s Border Trilogy

Israelis are both connected by their religion and imprisoned by their history—but what they’re judged by is their politics. And during this dangerous and pivotal time, one of the country’s most political directors has made one of his best films about one of Israeli’s most controversial moments. In Disengagement, Amos Gitai weaves a story of political separation and personal awakening with a defter, less agitprop touch than we’ve come to expect from the Haifa-born director. An occasionally unconventional yet always convincing performance by Oscar winner Juliet Binoche (The English Patient) should gain Gitai some new American fans, assuming they can find the movie, which is now available On Demand (beginning October 7) and in limited release as of October 9th.

As an international figure sometimes critical of Israel (one character here lashes out at Israel as a “country of fools”), Gitai is not always popular in his home country. So his tackling of the still controversial and ultimately damaging 2005 withdrawal of Israeli settlers from Gaza threatens to bring out the worst in him. Yet, while Gitai does indulge in the didacticism that informs large portions of his work, Disengagement is not a flamethrower. In the otherwise arresting prologue that lays out the filmmaker’s hopeful view of Middle East relations, a handsome Israeli man named Uli (Liron Levo) and a Palestinian woman meet on a train. During the passport check, they argue with the conductor about the abstract nature of national identity. It’s a soapbox moment, even if Gitai is right that our nationality is an accident of our birth and not a pretext to judge others, it’s still an annoying scene. Thankfully, he doesn’t stay on his soapbox for long. Uli’s train is headed to France and his father’s funeral. At the father’s empty and lonely Avignon estate is Uli’s half-sister Ana (Binoche). Tired and drifting and a little confused, Ana has overcome her own laziness and decided to leave her husband. But she’s still flighty, a child certain only of her own uncertainty, who goes so far as tempting Uli with her incestuous desires.

Our time in Avignon may feel bloated, and Gitai probably could have found a more efficient way to convey the same information, but it works. It puts Ana in a dreamy, unsettling limbo, a place between who she was and who she’s about to become. It also re-introduces Gitai’s signature style, one that’s made him a favorite in Europe. Like the New Wave directors to which he’s sometimes compared, Gitai favors long takes, floating, probing camerawork and intriguing choices, as when Gitai slowly moves away from Uli’s cell phone conversation about the Gaza withdrawal in favor of a meaningless chat about window cleaning between two estate employees.

Gitai’s films can have a distant and intellectual air but in Disengagement, the final installment of his Border Trilogy (the previous two being Promised Land and Free Zone), he finds a better balance. Once out of Avignon, the narrative becomes more conventional, but with his characters prepped and ready he can send them out to make his point. A portion of the father’s inheritance goes to Ana’s daughter, who can only receive it if Ana goes to Gaza to deliver it personally. The problem is that Ana abandoned her daughter twenty years earlier and doesn’t even know her own child’s name. Indeed, Ana is shocked to learn that her late father visited Dana (Dana Ivgy) every year in Israel while Ana was suffering through a cold marriage. Uli, who is in the Israeli army, must also return to Gaza to participate in the tragic rousting of his own countrymen from their homes as part of Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal plan. The two leave France together and arrive in Israel where Ana is escorted by car to Gaza in the hopes of finding her estranged daughter. Uli, meanwhile, conducts riot exercises, preparing the army to remove and, if necessary, forcibly drag away settlers who won’t leave their homes.

Gitai is a left-wing filmmaker with a sensitive worldview that comes clearly into focus during the last, and most impactful, part of the film. To many, being a left-winger in Israel means acquiescing to the demands of the Palestinians in the name of a long lasting peace. It certainly means that to Gitai, who casts himself as the soft-spoken driver escorting Ana to Gaza, allowing him to wonder if the settlers are “not supposed to be there anyway.” And later, in a single, virtuoso take that starts simply and ends in the chaos of rioting and buildings being uprooted by crane, Ana hears the pleas of Palestinians behind a fence chanting “take your share of our blood and go.”

Like all filmmakers who don’t hide their political thumbprint, what you think of Gitai will mostly determine what you think of his films. But even if you condemn him for not completely siding with Israel, there is no doubting the power of Ana’s transformation, which becomes inevitable during Gitai’s masterful blocking of the reunion between mother and daughter, along with the film’s final shot. It all feels especially Jewish, a reconsideration of Ana’s identity as a mother and a sister and a realigning of her place within a troubled religion that has never found peace.

Distributor: IFC Films
Cast: Juliette Binoche, Liron Levo, Jeanne Moreau, Barbara Hendricks and Hiam Abbass
Director: Amos Gitai
Screenwriters: Amos Gitai and Marie-Jose Sanselme
Producers: Amos Gitai, Laurent Truchot and Michael Tapuach
Genre: Drama
Rating: Unrated
Running time: 113 min.
Release date: October 9 ltd.