For an audience accustomed to linear dramatic narratives, DIVINE INTERVENTION (2002, Palestine) might be unsettling initially; but very soon, the sense of ennui that it exudes and its cinematography that captures the landscape and its people in wide-angle long shots begin to grow on you as you open up to an unusual experience where the plot – if you can call it that – unfolds through a series of vignettes of character studies seen through static frames. It’s like a mosaic that makes sense only when you look at it from a distance, in which the seemingly disparate elements begin to coalesce to create a meaning. DIVINE INTERVENTION is intensely political but drives home its point through dry wit that makes it all the more disturbing.
Palestinian auteur Elia Suleiman announced his arrival in world cinema with this astonishing debut. Look it up on Netflix.