Review of A Tramway in Jerusalem

Amos Gitai presents the title's two phrases in reverse: To Jerusalem A Tramway. It first establishes the place, then the means of entrance. This slice-of-life miscellany takes us East-West through the Jewish and Arab districts of the Holy City. In both the political and personal stories, people are on the same tram but going "in different directions," as the brittle couple Moshe and Didi remark. Despite an apparent incoherence, the film has a firm structure. It's framed by scenes of two beautiful women profiled on the left side of the screen singing. The opening song (declared at 5 a.m.) is the joyous Hebrew hymn Hasheeveinu: "Turn us back, O Lord to You, and we will turn. Renew our days as before" (Lamentations 5:21). At the end a beautiful Palestinian woman sings an Arabic song (pssst: I'd welcome a translation), accompanying herself atonally with hand-clackers. In the pivotal Episode 6 (at 19:12) a Palestinian man declares the Oslo Accord delusional in its treatment of Judea and Samaria. He sullenly predicts there will never be a Palestinian state. The pretty woman with him rejects his despair. She won't be considered "a demographic problem. A thorn in the ass," but retreats to a long silent meditation. That's like the woman at the end of the first episode, but far more melancholy. The film's finale will finally give the Palestinian woman a voice. Between the women's perspective in #1 and #6 fall scenes of male authority - and folly. In #2 (set at 12:31) the camera zooms past an orthodox Jew's wordless banjo number to a French father and his young son, lying together in pensive warmth. Other passengers sing along happily. The communal singalong resumes in #3 at 18:45, with a religious/political point: "The world is a very narrow bridge. What's really important is not to be afraid at all." The singing is replaced by a dubious yeshiva lecture in #4 (19:34). The earnest young scholar explains that the Torah advises that shooing the mother bird away from her nest is humane. It saves her from seeing she is losing her children. That's a guy thing. Her loss is hardly eased by her not seeing it happen. For this tight exclusive knot of men, religious logic betrays human responsibility and values secrecy over responsibility. The political pertinence is obvious. In #5 the religious tension is replaced by the purely secular enthusiasm of the Beitar Jerusalem soccer club fans, screaming wildly behind the new coach and his team's loquacious PR man. The woman interviewer ("a journalist and poet") earnestly asks the English speaking coach team questions but he is continually drowned out by the PR man's bulldozing enthusiasm. And lies: "I hate humus!" "It's so typically Israeli," the coach observes, "I can't say a word." When the scene closes on his long, silent left-screen pensiveness, he shows the same rueful marginalization and impotence the women in #1, #6 and the finale show. At 21:18 episode #7 introduces the personal, emotional form of the city's divisions. The blonde Gaby is saved from the security guard's sexual harassment ("I want to get to know you") when she spots her older woman friend Mali. She shows off her new, impossibly high-heeled shoes - bought to wear to bed. Gaby is locked into an illicit affair with a man she doesn't love, hardly knows but can't bring herself to escape. Like those other women and like the alien football coach, she ends the scene in a long, sad meditation over her troubled relationship. Romance and politics converge in her analogy: "It's as if we were both secret agents in enemy territory." And so it goes-- separate vignettes of literature and life that reveal the seismic undercurrents in this troubled historic site.