Bitter fruit

Hope and sorrow collide in
Eran Riklis’s excellent Lemon Tree

by MATTHEW HAYS

An ominous feeling sets in as Eran Riklis’s latest feature, Lemon Tree, unreels. The narrative itself, about a Palestinian woman attempting to save her lemon-tree orchard from the axes of the Israeli military, is threatening enough. But I grew worried for the film itself: the set-up seemed too obvious. Was this going to become something resembling an American made-for-TV movie-of-the-week from the ’70s?

Thankfully, no such thing transpires. A fiction obviously inspired by the current situation in the occupied territories—where olive trees are routinely destroyed, a key source of income for the Palestinians. Here, a Palestinian widow lives amid her lemon trees, until a new neighbour who happens to be an Israeli minister moves in next door. The military then deems her lemon trees a possible threat to his security, as terrorists could initiate some kind of shootout using the cover of the trees.

An epic legal battle begins, as our heroine (played by the excellent Hiam Abbass) consults with a lawyer and attempts to stop the lemon tree destruction. A tense standoff follows, with the minister and his wife moving into the house, bringing with them a load of bodyguards. They hold a lavish party to ring in the new place; tempers flare during the soiree in a scene that somehow manages to never be contrived, despite the topical elements Riklis and Suha Arraf (who co-wrote the screenplay) are clearly trying to pack in.

What’s extremely refreshing about Lemon Tree is its ability to take on the grim situation in the region without using only black and white. While we can see where the filmmakers’ sympathies obviously lie, their inclusion of sympathetic Israeli bodyguards, not to mention the depiction of the minister’s wife as someone ultimately on the Palestinian woman’s side, are a welcome respite from didacticism.

And just when you thought Riklis might cave and give us the Hollywood studio treatment, punctuating the film with a victorious court decision, he pulls back, forcing us to confront reality. It’s bloody nasty—but it’s also very powerful filmmaking.

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