Review of Divine Intervention

This is very funny movie. It's also a very angry movie. The

combination ends up being very subversive. You may laugh, yawn

or rant at this movie, but you will react to it in some sort of way as

you spend 92 minutes trying to figure it out. I laughed a lot. But I felt

sad, too. The desperation of the filmmaker is visible in every

frame.

My favorite bit would probably be a toss-up between aforementioned settler serenade and the overkill with the snake.

The scene with the female freedom fighter also works, both as a

utopian dream of fighting back and a spoof of Asian martial arts

flicks like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Ultimately, though, it's

tough to describe in print a movie that is so relentlessly audio- visual in its metaphors. They say that to try to describe a visual

joke is to ruin it and Yadon ilaheyya is full of them.

I think the one thing this movie really does well is wipe out a lot of

preconceptions that people may have about the Palestinian-Israeli

conflict. The Palestinians are neither vicious terrorists nor saintly

victims here. And the Israelis look just as miserable as the

Palestinians--the only real difference in that respect is that the

Israelis are the ones with all the guns.