No matter how you choose to tread it, the creative path through contemporary conflict is always going to be a dangerous one. Filmmakers situating their work in areas of partisan political friction have several routes through their chosen setting, none of them problem-free. They can pick their side and stick to it, as Sergei Loznitsa did in his pointed semi-satire Donbass in 2018. They can relegate the conflict to the background, as Kenneth Branagh did in his laughable 2021 attempt at a period depiction of still-ongoing strife, Belfast. Or they can have a stab at a bit of both-sides-ism, acknowledging the difficult truths of the situation without conclusively assigning blame to either dueling party, at least not without assigning some to the other too.
It’s this approach that Eran Kolirin takes in Let It Be Morning, a rather toothless, equivocal take on the seemingly endless Israel-Palestine conflict that employs its political backdrop as narrative fuel without ever actually addressing its causes, nature or long-term effects. Roadblocks established overnight prevent our Palestinian protagonist, Sami (Alex Bakri) from returning to his home in Israel after attending his brother’s wedding; they also effectively besiege his family’s village, causing drama both in the family and in the community, both micro and macro, to gradually erupt. It is, essentially, a family dramedy in a classic storytelling construct: confine a bunch of characters for a given length of time and, basically, watch sparks fly.
What sparks do fly in Let It Be Morning, however, are distinctly debatable. Kolirin, adapting Sayed Kashua’s 2005 novel, has inherited something of a microcosm of Palestinian society in which each and every character has been designed to represent a different facet. The potential for bludgeoning melodrama is everywhere and, to Kolirin’s credit, he keeps that potential largely at bay, all the while maintaining a simple, accessible style that doesn’t exactly invite understatement. This is, despite its design, not some rabid histrionic spectacle. Nor is it an especially subtle work, though—Kashua’s novel was painted in broad strokes but it at least had the space to develop those strokes, to add nuance and depth. In a little over an hour and a half, Kolirin has no such space, so his film resorts to a familiar assemblage of stock scenes and predictable plot points. If he doesn’t hit those points with blunt force, his gentler touch doesn’t generate much dramatic intensity.
And that may be because Let It Be Morning seems fashioned to resist courting any and all controversy by avoiding the kind of fraught intensity that might engender it. Kolirin’s Palestinian townspeople are humble, honest folk, less enraged and impoverished by their wretched position than mildly irritated by it. His Israeli soldiers aren’t the arrogant occupiers we expect them to be but, instead, bumbling foot soldiers more concerned with keeping their jobs than they are with subjugating a people. There is, no doubt, room for a mild-mannered comedy in almost all real-life scenarios in art but Kolirin doesn’t find much room for real life in his mild-mannered comedy. Not only is the conflict at large diminished by his approach, the interpersonal conflicts in his film are undermined upon inception by banality and rote sentimentality.
Perhaps most damning is how such artistic and political passivity affects the film’s most put-upon characters. Sami isn’t just visiting his family home for a wedding, he’s visiting the house next door, currently under construction for him and his wife and son to move into. The builders are a father and son from the West Bank, in the village illegally, living in the as-yet unfinished walls of the grand, multi-story residence they’re grafting day after day to erect for our relatively privileged protagonist. Kolirin displays clear compassion for their situation but, as the corrupt local council begins rooting out all those without permission to be in their village, brandishing the excuse that their departure will lift the roadblocks, he sullies their plight by continuing to focus on other characters. This father and son, the most vulnerable figures in the film, are reduced to mere victims, pieces in other people’s puzzle, forgotten about when the film has no immediate need for their presence, which is unfortunately often.
That the whole of Let It Be Morning, in all its constituent parts and in its entirety, goes down fairly easily, then, isn’t quite the compliment it ought to be. Even a mild-mannered comedy set in recent-day Palestine ought not just to nod toward the difficulties inherent in living under siege—a sage filmmaker (and Kolirin has proven before that he can be just this) should be expected to weave those difficulties into the fabric of their film, no matter what path they’re taking through the conflict. Kolirin can’t avoid it but he doesn’t seem to want much to do with it, or perhaps just not in any authentic way. He treads his path lightly—so lightly he only trips himself up.
Photo courtesy of Cohen Media Group
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