Watch Free Zone For Free

Must See Movie...

hyped garbage

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Directed and co-written by Amos Gitai, Free Zone is the first Israeli movie to be shot in Jordan, and was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. Without a doubt my interest in watching the film is for the performance of the luminous Natalie Portman at her birthplace, and one which spotted a bit of controversy and ruckus with their filming near the Wailing Wall. But what is essentially my first Israeli film, I was awed by its simplicity yet powerful underlying message within.The film is bookended by the cumulative song Chad Gadya which grows on you with each passing minute, but yet watching Natalie Portman's Rebecca crying uncontrollably for more than 5 minutes, somehow just breaks your heart, and you start to wonder why so. We find out later that the American had broken off with her boyfriend Julio (Aki Avni) and is now sitting in a cab she boarded, without a destination to go to in a city not of her own, and begets the driver, Hanna Ben Moshe (Hana Laszlo, in an excellent performance which was to win her the Best Actress Award at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival) to take her anywhere. Hanna grudgingly agrees despite having a personal errant to run in Jordan, and brings her along for a ride.Like a road trip, the cinematography presents the film in 2 distinct ways, one as if you're an invisible passenger on the same journey with the ladies, ever present in the passenger seat, with point of views centered from within and around the vehicle they're in. The other view, as Rebecca puts it, is that it's "amazing to see things you read in the books". We explore the scenery from Tel Aviv to Amman, in this road trip, and always for those (like me) who have yet to visit both countries, allows for a documentary styled eye-opener like a travelogue for sight and sound. Uniquely, instead of being satisfied with just showing endless roads and paths, we get compressed time with a double exposure and superimposition of the back- stories of both Rebecca and Hanna, and learn of the objective of the latter in this journey to seek someone to recover bad debts to the tune of US$30,000.Being set in the Middle East also brings to mind the volatility of the security environment and peace agreements in place between the Israelis and Arabs. Issues such as those at the border depicted in the film reflects that clear and present tension that security personnel grapple with everyday, as did the radio announcements made over the impending and credible intelligence of threats. When crossed over to Jordan and meeting up with Leila (Hiam Abbass), we sense a deep mistrust between the characters, even though it stemmed from the root of all evil - money.That aside, the movie did take ample time off to provide a candid observation of common folk on both sides of the border, highlighting their plight to earn a living, and the tenacity and will of villagers who rebuild their lives ordeal after ordeal. Theirs is never to give up.But I thought the payload came from the very assured direction of Gitai, with a succinct depiction of the uneasy tripartite relationship between the Arabs, Israelis and the Americans, as represented by the respective characters in their dealings with one another. Sure they bond over cigarettes, music and a common goal in their road trip back to Israel, but under this short term peaceful existence you still cannot shake off that aged old deep rooted mistrust, as it manifested itself toward the end and really got blown way out of proportion, dragging it out. I felt it mirrored the challenges for long term peace, and that comes probably only as a result of a profound, sincere and genuine understanding of cultures cutting both ways, as Leila casually remarked starting with the learning of the Arabic and Hebrew languages. And the most interesting note would be that of Rebecca's insistence to tag along Hanna and get herself embroiled in the feud between both sides, only to find herself running away when the going gets hot, either from a lack of patience, or having absolutely no clue and surrendering from trying to seek a workable peace process for all.Deceptively simple, with a powerful underlying message. And the wonderful performances by the ensemble team of actresses, made this all the more worthwhile to sit through.

This film is one of my top five most painful films to watch. Amos Gitai calls himself a director, but he offers nothing to legitimize that title. He is hardly artistic, but he must see himself as an artist--the way he drowns his audience with the superimposed scenes over and over again; the way he drags his shots on excessively in an attempt to be poignant; the music and sound effects he chose to convey sadness and lost are so exhausting. The result was an incomprehensible and excruciatingly dull compilation of scenes slapped together to make a so-called 90-minute film. I hope that Natalie Portman accepted this role without full comprehension of the director's intentions. If she did, I'm glad that she has already made a name for herself in Hollywood.

It would be easy to misunderstand or even miss the whole point of this movie. But if you can get past the endless opening scene of a sobbing Natalie Portman, by the end Gitai has explored three characters (with great acting performances), three women from different cultures, and three countries. I don't want to give away the end, but Gitai has managed to make a point about Israelis, Palestinians and, after some thought about his set-up of the character, especially Americans. This makes some of the slower, strained parts of the movie better, even makes them seem to fit together nicely. My grade might be a tad high, but it's rare when any movie maker pulls off character, acting, politics, and characters that well represent their different societies. For that, this movie gets a lot of credit.

This film is low budget and it definitely shows.It's bad and no words about its artistic merits will make it any better. I only heard one truth in the movie, when the Arab woman said that people should speak their enemy's language. There is no doubt that Arabic should be compulsory in Israeli school. (I was taught French instead). Furthermore, the Brazilian who is so praising this very bad move, Hanna Laslo's father (in the movie) hails from Berlin and therefore she is not a Russian_Israeli. Also, maybe I am mistaken , but I don't recall that Israeli tanks reached the Jordanian/Iraqi border during the 1967 war, so they could not have possibly destroyed the Oasis there. I consider myself left of centre when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict, but this movie certainly did not do anything for me in that regards.