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Best movie ever!

As Good As It Gets

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Syria came into the news in 2011 following an uprising against Bashar Assad, making it all the more interesting that "The Syrian Bride" takes place around the time when Assad took over from his late father. The movie looks at the coming marriage of a Druze woman in the Golan Heights (a formerly Syrian region occupied by Israel since the 1967 war) to a TV star from Damascus. After the marriage, the woman will have to move to Syria and her village will never allow her to return. But Israeli and Syrian bureaucracy looks certain to complicate things.Criticism of the movie that I read is that it doesn't focus on the role that the Israel-Palestine conflict would likely play in the issue of the Golan Heights, and that it depicts the Israeli and Druze characters sympathetically while portraying the Syrian characters as buffoons. That IS a problem with the movie. But aside from that, director Eran Riklis takes a good look at the Kafkaesque bureaucracy plaguing the people in the Golan Heights. Life in this no-man's land comes across as a tough existence. It's also one of the few movies in which we see a strong Arab woman. Worth seeing, as long as you understand that it does pretty much gloss over any role that the Israel-Palestine conflict would have to play.

In a way, good movies allow you to check out different cultures and situations from your armchair. They could give you, for example, an idea of what it would be like as Brazilian gang member. The Syrian Bride lets you peek in on the Golan Heights, a part of Syria occupied by Israel. They won't let anyone move in or return to that enclave. A young Druze woman has decided to use her last chance of re-establishing herself after a failed marriage, she will leave the Heights forever to move to Syria proper for an arranged marriage with a TV actor she has never met in real life.We also get to meet, amongst others, the bride's father, who has served a long jail term for resisting the occupation, and his two estranged sons.In the anticlimactic end, the bride struggles to cross the border because the Syrian customs officer refuses to accept an Israeli stamp in her passport. When everyone is arguing, she slips across the border and into her new, uncertain life.

This deceptively modest 2004 film lingers in the memory because of the bigger sociopolitical context that Israeli director Eran Riklis provides in setting his story in the Golan Heights, an area occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War in 1967. Over the course of one day, the story revolves around an extended Druze family in the northern village of Majdal Shams where they are preparing for the wedding of youngest daughter Mona. The catch is that she has never met the groom, a distant relative who happens to be a big Syrian TV personality in Damascus. It sounds like the source of comedy hijinks, but there is a sad undertone because once married, Mona officially becomes Syrian and cannot return home to her family.The intended couple, however, is not the focus as much as the family dynamics that become ignited by the wedding. The patriarch is Hammed, a political activist on probation, and he has two sons - Hattem, who has been cast out by the conservative religious cabal for leaving the country and marrying a Russian woman, and Marwan, who provides the comedy relief as a womanizing salesman. The glue of the family, however, is provided by eldest sister Amal, who defiantly stands up to the men in her family and wants to get her bachelor's degree in Haifa. The first hour deals mainly with the standard pre-wedding confusion, though it happens to take place on the same day that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father, but the last half-hour takes place entirely at the Israel-Syria border crossing where the officials from both countries refuse to cooperate with a negotiating Red Cross worker in allowing Mona to enter Syria.With its primarily somber tone, this is no Middle Eastern derivative of "My Big, Fat Greek Wedding", but Riklis and co-screenwriter Suha Arraf supply genuine warmth toward the characters and bring immediacy and credibility to the personal situation at hand. The acting is solid with Hiam Abbass the standout as Amal. There are nice turns by Makram Khoury as Hammed, his real-life daughter Clara as Mona, Eyad Sheety as Hattem and Ashraf Barhom who steals scenes as the gap-toothed Marwan. Special mention should be made for Michael Wiesweg's expert cinematography which perfectly captures the mostly sun-baked terrain. This is a case where the 2006 DVD package from Koch Lorber is invaluable for the context it provides to the movie's story. The making-of featurette, an extensive interview with Riklis and his accompanying commentary all help considerably in understanding the political situation that both drives and reflects the wedding preparation complications. Also included is the original trailer as well as the U.S. version.

The story line touches many open sores afflicting the Israeli society, prejudice towards ethnic minorities, unwillingness of factions in that society to try and understand and accept one another, police bigotry and sheer racism. As an Israeli living abroad I could relate to all of the above. However, you don't have to be from that region to appreciate this moving and powerful Drama. The film basically deals with the horrific struggle of a family, from a marginalised sector of Israeli society, to get their daughter married to a man over the Syrian boarder however, by doing that they will never be able to see her again. A very very emotional and humane film.