Bordering on great
To paraphrase Robert Frost, someone there is that doesn’t love a wall. And that someone is David Hare. The British playwright and two-time Oscarnominated screenwriter (for The Hours and The Reader) has visited Israel regularly since the late 1980s and, as he sees it, things there are getting worse.
Part of that has to do with the construction of what is officially termed the Israeli West Bank barrier, although it’s instructive to note that its common Hebrew name translates as “separation fence,” while in Arabic it’s “racial segregation wall.” The wall was started in the early 2000s as a deterrent to suicide bombings.
Wall, Hare’s personal investigation into the meaning and effects of the barricade, include discussions with fellow intellectuals from both the Israeli and Palestinian communities.
Driving through the countryside with a Palestinian friend
behind the wheel, Hare witnesses the slowdowns and indignities of checkpoints; though at one point, mistaken for Israeli settlers, they are diverted onto a pristine and empty highway to Ramallah. There, they meet a Palestinian lawyer who notes that his hometown is lucky not to be mentioned by name in any holy book; it makes life there a little more normal.
Wall was directed by Cam Christiansen, an animator with the National Film Board of Canada. He has animated the story, though to uneven effect. It’s cool to see the border barrier springing up like a mushroom in some shots, falling from the sky like a heap of Jenga blocks in others. But the human faces are not as well served.
Technical quibbles aside, Wall is an engrossing and individual discussion of a seemingly intractable problem that was originally floated as a solution.
But the security barrier has since become a de facto future border, even where it cuts into Palestinian territory. Meanwhile, terrorism continues, with rockets fired over the wall. “In the kernel of an idea lies that idea’s incipient obsolescence,” Hare notes. More than 15 years in the making, and not even complete, the wall already has cracks.