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By Nathan Cone

The most amazing thing about “Salt of this Sea” may be the fact that it even got made in the first place. To be sure, this is a revealing look at the complications of navigating the Israeli-Palestinian divide. But if what’s on screen is even half as much as what’s on the ground, it’s a wonder the film even got made in the first place.

First-time director Annemarie Jacir creates a remarkable portrait of the region, utilizing scores of locations and often shooting without permits to get the footage she needed.

The story follows thirty-something Soraya from Brooklyn as she returns to Palestine to claim her literal and figurative birthright; a bank there has been holding her family’s money. When they refuse to honor her name, she takes matters into her own hands with two newfound accomplices, stealing the cash and hitting the road. Passing checkpoints, the three make their way westward to the sea. All along the way there are shifting glances and pointed questions from passer-by and the authorities. It’s only a matter of time before the movie ends just as you suspect it will, with one arrest and one deportation.

Jacir avoids many of the political details of the Israeli-Palestinian debate, even if it’s clear what the filmmaker’s perspective is. The closest it comes to engaging the issue is an encounter with a Jewish hippie girl who offers (ironically) to allow Soraya and her friends to stay with her in Soraya’s old house. A house that Soraya points out was stolen in 1948 when her grandparents were forced out. But to the current young occupant, her mouth agape as Soraya loudly stakes a claim on the home, 1948 might just as well be 2,000 years ago.

There are no easy answers to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But as Soraya, American by any other measure (she even wears a PBS “Electric Company” t-shirt) gazes over the landscape with faraway eyes, one gets the idea that there are many like her that yearn for their roots, yet only find roadblocks.

5/31/11

 

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