Omar

By Nat Master

Mailed on March 02, 2014


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Dear Royi Arama
Jib Operator

Dear Royi,

Hany Abu-Assad's Omar opens with a gunshot and a siren. Omar, a young baker (and, apparently, parkour enthusiast), cautiously scales the Israeli security wall, dropping down into the West Bank. One immediately wonders what dangerous mission would lead him to take such a risk. As it turns out, Omar just wants to hang out with his friends and see Nadia, the girl he loves. It's just like Romeo scaling the balcony to see Juliet--if the balcony was a symbol of one of the most polemical geopolitical crises of our time.

For a while, we're lulled into thinking we're watching a quiet, slice-of-life film centered on this charming little love story. Then comes another gunshot, and Omar finds himself in the untenable position of being an informant to Rami, a Shin Bet agent, forced to betray his best friends and put his future with Nadia on the line.

Omar wanders through a West Bank that is cramped and suffocating, with no chance of any kind of privacy. Indeed, the camera is always positioned like an eavesdropper, lingering just behind Omar's shoulder, quietly intruding on his few stolen moments with Nadia. It's a relief, then, when you draw us up and out, high above the ground, as Omar enters and leaves scenes by scrambling over walls, dropping from windows, or leaping from rooftop to rooftop. After a while, I was actually surprised when he used the front door to enter a friend's house.

As Omar's predicament worsened, I found myself increasingly eager for his next chance to spring up and away from the ground. Because things on the ground, frankly, are awful. When making like Spider-Man above the heads of his friends and neighbours, Omar is at his freest and most surefooted. All that await him on solid ground is war. Not only do paranoia and suspicion take hold of the characters, we lose all faith in them as well. As the plot progresses, we wonder which of Omar's friends betrayed him, whether Nadia truly loves him, and whether Rami is genuinely starting to care about Omar or merely manipulating him. When the Israeli forces pursue him, yet again, through a darkened, labyrinthine marketplace, I wanted nothing more than for Omar to find the nearest wall and hoist himself up above the city once more. I wanted you and your jib to take Omar out of the world Abu-Assad had created on the ground. I wanted you to take me there, too, to where none could follow.

Reaching skywards,

Nat.

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