By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com
Lebanese writer/director Ziad Doueiri (who was also a cinematographer for Quentin Tarantino) has turned Yasmina Khadra’s novel into the heart-gripping film “The Attack,” now playing at the Loft Cinema, 3233 E. Speedway Blvd.
Set in modern day Tel-Aviv, the title could easily be “Love in the Time of Terrorists,” though it isn’t about falling in love. Dr. Amin Jaafari (Ali Suliman) is a secular Arab enjoying a successful career, honored for his work and blessed with a beautiful wife.
The good doctor’s happiness is shattered when his wife is killed by a suicide bomber in a local restaurant. Then he is completely destroyed to learn his wife was the suicide bomber.
How could such a thing happen? He had no idea she harbored such intense beliefs. The remainder of the film follows Amin visiting Palestinian villages of his wife’s friends and relatives, heedlessly searching for the truth.
It will be this uncovering of truths Amin never suspected that will shape his own arc of change from an educated professional who considered himself above the desperate demands of these undisciplined terrorists.
What this powerful picture presents is the desperation of people who have considered themselves helpless for so long. Implied, of course, is the unbending attitude of the Jews who will give no quarter in any compromise for peace with the Palestinians.
While the Jews have been very good to Amin, the experiences of his wife Siham (Reymonde Amsellem) were quite different. She saw into dark corners of a world Amin didn’t even know existed. The tragedy is that she saw too clearly.
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