It has been nine years since the release of Hany Abu-Assad's provocative and unsettling Paradise Now , the story of two Palestinian youths who become suicide bombers.
After a disappointing foray into straight American action fare in The Courier in 2011, Abu-Assad now returns to the occupied territories with the dark, noirish and quietly disruptive Omar.
It is a story of love in the time of occupation and focused on the far-reaching psychological traumas of life in the West Bank.
Omar (Adam Bakri), Tarek (Iyad Hoorani) and Amjad (Samer Bisharat) are childhood friends bound together by a hatred of the occupation and belief that they can contribute to its end like so many others before them. When they shoot an Israeli soldier, their lives are upended and Omar becomes a pawn in the murky plans of Israeli agent Rami (Waleed Zuaiter), who uses Omar's love of Tarek's sister, Nadia (Leem Lubany), to get him to betray his friends.
Abu-Assad uses his sometimes melodramatic plot as a skeleton to highlight the way in which the occupation exerts its force over every part of daily life in the West Bank. He never allows his direction to slap the audience in the face, preferring to keep his camera quietly observant of the small details.
The Israeli characters apart from Rami are perfunctory cutouts, but that's okay - the film makes no apologies for focusing its attention on the agency of its difficult and troubled Palestinian protagonists and the struggles they face navigating basic daily tasks that many of us take for granted.
Bakri is compelling in the lead role, his quiet, poetic face segueing almost unnoticeably between cold calculation and the nonchalance of youth. He's well-supported by the deceptive sparkly eyes of his antagonist, Zuaiter, who is alternatively fatherly and dangerous.
The love story is touching, the plot engaging and the political point intentionally ambiguous. With a killer ending and a refusal to impose answers or offer easy solutions to a much debated topic, Omar offers its audience a thoughtful look at the realities of life in an impossible situation.
It is satisfying genre cinema and reminds all of us who have come through histories of violence of the long shadow that it casts over both victims and perpetrators - categories of people who are never as distinct as our sense of injustice would like us to believe.
What others say
It doesn't offer the promise of a just or satisfying resolution, a fatalism all the more devastating given its realistic methods and humane, understated performances.- A.O. Scott, New York Times
This is a coming-of-age drama, a romance and a thriller that combines multiple reversals and plot twists with chases and action sequences. There is also a documentary-like aspect to its portrayal of a divided and occupied Palestine in which lines between everyday family life and political struggle have long since been blurred.
Geoffrey Macnab, The UK Independent
'Omar' has the intimacy of a star-crossed romance and the political and moral complexity of a le Carré story. It is most compelling.
Jonathan Romney, The Guardian
There are two images in the movie. One is a face; one is a wall. The face is Omar's, played by Adam Bakri, an excellent find for the filmmaker, who relies on him to carry the emotional weight of this difficult movie. The wall divides one city from another, sometimes one neighbourhood from another.
Betsy Sharkey, LA Times
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