Yesterday, in the course of my work, I stopped to think about why the olive branch is a symbol of peace. Fortunately, at least for workplace efficiency, Wikipedia is at hand to respond to idle thoughts like this and it came up with the following; “In Western culture, derived from the customs of Ancient Greece, it (the olive branch) symbolizes peace or goodwill. The original link between olive branches and peace is unknown. Some explanations center on that olive trees take a very long time to bear fruit. Thus the cultivation of olives is something that is generally impossible in time of war.” So there. Not known. And then I thought a bit about Lemon Tree, a film that I saw last week.
The film, made by Israeli director Eran Riklis, explores what happens when the Israeli Minister of Defense and his wife move to a new housing development which is right next to an old grove of lemon trees owned by a Palestinian woman who has inherited the block from her father. The issue becomes one of security – how can a government minister be safe when it is so easy for terrorists to sneak through the grove and lob a grenade into his property? The lemon trees must go. So it’s about property, boundaries, rights, history, fences, large imposing fences, safety and also what happens to the little people in this large historical struggle. Riklis said somewhere that one of his inspirations for making the film was hearing the stories of Palestinian people who had taken their legal issues to the Israeli High Court. The article I read said that he thought that was a tribute to the Israeli justice system. Anyone watching the film will have their own views about that.
The film starts with the domestic. Widowed Salma, played by Hiam Abbass, is making preserved lemons. The camera pans in close as she chops the lemons and adds chilli and liquid. It’s a beautiful, intimate scene. Outside there is the clanking of furniture as two men deliver the furniture belonging to the Minister of Defence, confusingly named Israel, into their new house, overseen by his wife, Mira. By morning, a watchtower has been built, overlooking Salma’s grove and soon after, she receives a letter telling her that the trees must be cut down.
The plot around the receipt of the letter is particularly poignant. The letter is in Hebrew so she can’t read it. She must go to a Palestinian café to have it translated and we see her entering the all-male café, the resultant hush in the room, the offhand treatment from the Palestinian men who are drinking coffee, who let her know that she will lose her trees and also, that she must not accept the compensation offered by Israeli authorities – “We don’t accept their money.” Salma is alone.
Hiam Abbass’ portrayal of this woman is one of the most interesting things about the film. Abbass has a very beautiful strong face and it’s just wonderful seeing an older woman in a really strong role. She conveys strength, hurt, resilience and yearning so so well. I loved watching her. Riklis said that one of the reasons he made this film was his desire to find a good role for this actress – may she be in many more films. Terrible things happen to Abbass but I never felt emotionally manipulated by the film-maker. I felt for her without thinking of her as a victim because she does fight back against the order to lose her lemon grove.
At one stage, in court, she says ”I am a real person” and this is possibly the crux of the larger message; that for too long, people on both sides of this debate have demonised each other. The film also explores the experiences of Mira, the wife of the Minister. Both women are lonely; both have children in the United States and have seemingly little in their lives apart from their respective work. We sympathise with both women who have little power or input in the larger politics of this world.
The ending is particularly dramatic so I won’t give it away. It’s really powerful as a metaphor for what is happening in Israel at present. Maybe it’s naff to think about that Seekers song – “the fruit of the poor lemon – it’s impossible to eat” but somehow that fits with the ending. The fruit of this particular conflict does no one any favours. And is not likely to in the immediate future.
Showing posts with label domesticity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label domesticity. Show all posts
Monday, October 27, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Rabbit, Run
What comes to mind when you think about the characteristics of a rabbit? For me the quality of timidity is uppermost so when John Updike talks about using the rabbit as a metaphor for his young protagonist in Rabbit Run, it’s not quite what I expected.
Rabbit, AKA Harry Angstrom, is 26. He feels like his life has already peaked. As Updike puts it; “You get the feeling you’re in your coffin before they’ve taken your blood out.” At school Rabbit was a basketball star but now he is a has-been, earning a living demonstrating a kitchen appliance, married to a girl who he feels little for and father of a child who figures little in his thinking.
It’s a brave book because the main protagonist is so rarely likable and we develop sympathy for, but no strong liking for most of the rest of the cast of characters. It’s a book written by a young man, about the life of a young man who is filled with impulse and a yearning for something that he can’t even articulate but it’s something like “Life’s gotta be better than this.”
The first part of the novel is a road movie. It feels like a movie, the camera sliding all over the place under a big starry sky and Rabbit ventures further out beyond his comfort zone although it is clear that the “comfort zone” of the town of Brewer is now a discomfit zone for him. I was scared reading it; I so wanted Harry to go home. He was so adrift in the universe and consequently ungrounded and vulnerable. Eventually he returns to Brewer but not to his wife and child. He hooks up with the first woman he meets, Ruth. He is hapless rather than opportunist but frustrating. I waited for him to begin to miss his little boy but 100 pages go by without a moment’s reflection about his son. John Updike said that he wrote Rabbit, Run in response to Jack Kerouac's On the Road, and tried to depict "what happens when a young American family man goes on the road – the people left behind get hurt.”
The novel is also brave, for the time period, in the way it depicts the character Ruth, who, of course, is the character I most responded to. She struggles to identify what is good for her and to stand up for herself; Updike depicts her internal battles really well even though she gets only a limited amount of time in the book. Harry is dangerous and even though she is pregnant, she does not readily let him back into her life. I found myself desperately wanting them to get together but this would be such a bad deal for Ruth. Harry is a very bad bargain. Why did I want this “happy ending”? The following sentence says it all – Ruth has told Harry that she is pregnant to him and that she thinks he would be bad news back in her life and yet there seems to be a slim opening – and all he can think about is food; “He nervously felt her watching him for some sign of resolution inspired by her speech. In fact he has hardly listened; it is too complicated and, compared to the vision of a sandwich, unreal.”
Updike's novel is noted as being one of several well regarded, early usages of the present tense. Updike stated that "in Rabbit, Run, I liked writing in the present tense. You can move between minds, between thoughts and objects and events with a curious ease not available to the past tense. I don't know if it is clear to the reader as it is to the person writing, but there are kinds of poetry, kinds of music you can strike off in the present tense." He also writes “At one point Rabbit is literally lost, and tears up a map he cannot read; but the present tense, to me as I began to write it, felt not so much ominous as exhilaratingly speedy and free – free of the grammatical bonds of the traditional past tense and of the subtly dead, muffling hand it lays on every action. To write “he says” instead of “he said" rebellious and liberating in 1959.”
I very much like Updike’s prose as well as his exploration of the domestic. American society is undergoing a quiet revolution but Rabbit, Run is preoccupied with the struggle with domesticity, with the familiar, the unsexy, the predictable, the honest, the true, the respectable. And maybe that’s what the larger changes in US society are about too but they don’t impinge on this novel except that we can see, from the contrast in generations, from the aging Springers and Angstroms, from Coach Tothero, that the next generation is yearning for something different.
His prose? Here is another example ”He comes onto the porch to find the boy between his grandmother’s legs, his face buried in her belly. In worming against her warmth he has pulled her dress up from her knees and their repulsive breadth and pallor, laid bare defensively, superimposed upon the tiny gamely gritted teeth the boy exposed for him, this old whiteness strained through this fine mesh, make a milk that feels to Eccles like his own blood.” (p136) David Boroff, in a review written in 1960, described it as “a tender and discerning study of the desperate and the hungering in our midst.” Updike is perhaps a little soft on Rabbit but he was young too when he wrote it.
Rabbit, AKA Harry Angstrom, is 26. He feels like his life has already peaked. As Updike puts it; “You get the feeling you’re in your coffin before they’ve taken your blood out.” At school Rabbit was a basketball star but now he is a has-been, earning a living demonstrating a kitchen appliance, married to a girl who he feels little for and father of a child who figures little in his thinking.
It’s a brave book because the main protagonist is so rarely likable and we develop sympathy for, but no strong liking for most of the rest of the cast of characters. It’s a book written by a young man, about the life of a young man who is filled with impulse and a yearning for something that he can’t even articulate but it’s something like “Life’s gotta be better than this.”
The first part of the novel is a road movie. It feels like a movie, the camera sliding all over the place under a big starry sky and Rabbit ventures further out beyond his comfort zone although it is clear that the “comfort zone” of the town of Brewer is now a discomfit zone for him. I was scared reading it; I so wanted Harry to go home. He was so adrift in the universe and consequently ungrounded and vulnerable. Eventually he returns to Brewer but not to his wife and child. He hooks up with the first woman he meets, Ruth. He is hapless rather than opportunist but frustrating. I waited for him to begin to miss his little boy but 100 pages go by without a moment’s reflection about his son. John Updike said that he wrote Rabbit, Run in response to Jack Kerouac's On the Road, and tried to depict "what happens when a young American family man goes on the road – the people left behind get hurt.”
The novel is also brave, for the time period, in the way it depicts the character Ruth, who, of course, is the character I most responded to. She struggles to identify what is good for her and to stand up for herself; Updike depicts her internal battles really well even though she gets only a limited amount of time in the book. Harry is dangerous and even though she is pregnant, she does not readily let him back into her life. I found myself desperately wanting them to get together but this would be such a bad deal for Ruth. Harry is a very bad bargain. Why did I want this “happy ending”? The following sentence says it all – Ruth has told Harry that she is pregnant to him and that she thinks he would be bad news back in her life and yet there seems to be a slim opening – and all he can think about is food; “He nervously felt her watching him for some sign of resolution inspired by her speech. In fact he has hardly listened; it is too complicated and, compared to the vision of a sandwich, unreal.”
Updike's novel is noted as being one of several well regarded, early usages of the present tense. Updike stated that "in Rabbit, Run, I liked writing in the present tense. You can move between minds, between thoughts and objects and events with a curious ease not available to the past tense. I don't know if it is clear to the reader as it is to the person writing, but there are kinds of poetry, kinds of music you can strike off in the present tense." He also writes “At one point Rabbit is literally lost, and tears up a map he cannot read; but the present tense, to me as I began to write it, felt not so much ominous as exhilaratingly speedy and free – free of the grammatical bonds of the traditional past tense and of the subtly dead, muffling hand it lays on every action. To write “he says” instead of “he said" rebellious and liberating in 1959.”
I very much like Updike’s prose as well as his exploration of the domestic. American society is undergoing a quiet revolution but Rabbit, Run is preoccupied with the struggle with domesticity, with the familiar, the unsexy, the predictable, the honest, the true, the respectable. And maybe that’s what the larger changes in US society are about too but they don’t impinge on this novel except that we can see, from the contrast in generations, from the aging Springers and Angstroms, from Coach Tothero, that the next generation is yearning for something different.
His prose? Here is another example ”He comes onto the porch to find the boy between his grandmother’s legs, his face buried in her belly. In worming against her warmth he has pulled her dress up from her knees and their repulsive breadth and pallor, laid bare defensively, superimposed upon the tiny gamely gritted teeth the boy exposed for him, this old whiteness strained through this fine mesh, make a milk that feels to Eccles like his own blood.” (p136) David Boroff, in a review written in 1960, described it as “a tender and discerning study of the desperate and the hungering in our midst.” Updike is perhaps a little soft on Rabbit but he was young too when he wrote it.
I read a lot of the "Rabbit" books in my early 20's and it's a great pleasure coming back to them: I am hungry for the next one.
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