"Heaven Must Be": Bitterness And Irony From People

On the empty old street in Nazareth, Sleiman, who was walking alone, heard the noise behind him and turned his head around. A group of small bullies looked at each other step by step, and the hearts of the audience were picked up. Immediately, the little bully ran to the end of the street, ignoring Sleiman and flying across him. Sleiman, like the audience in front of the screen, stared at him with great eyes, staring and observing, keeping calm as much as possible and trying to hide his panic. The above is a scene soon after the opening of heaven, which is full of metaphorical nature and reflects the unique temperament of the whole movie.

Throughout the contemporary movie world, there are few directors that can be created like Elijah Sleiman. Especially in the bleak environment of the third world movie group, it is possible to inherit the great comedy tradition from Chaplin, Quito and Jacques Tati. He likes to play roles in his movies, not only the creator of all the stories, but also the observer, and even "innocent and ignorant" like the audience, trying to find out the trivia around him.

"Heaven must be" is ten years away from his last work, "time is still". Sleiman has never been a worried creators. As a Palestinian director, his life is full of experience of separation and exile, and he is looking for creative material from a journey, the endless curiosity and attachment to his homeland, which constitutes the most primitive tension of his works.

The three paragraph narration of "Heaven must be" is composed of the Director / protagonist's experience in three places in Nazareth, Paris and New York. Nazareth is the hometown. It is the place where he usually flowers, smokes, talks with neighbors, and looks at people who steal fruits in the yard. It is full of Oriental mystical prophecy, but at the same time it is somewhat cloudy. The political turmoil in this part is indirectly displayed through the above street small mixture scene, and Sleiman embarks on the journey to search for heaven.

Flying to the sky and landing in the western world, it is more and more unrealistic to greet Sleiman. In the paragraphs of Paris and New York, this sense of absurdity is most vividly displayed. Sleiman is not afraid of displaying the daily passages. Although he claims not to use any social media, he has already grasped the charm and magic of the fragmentation of social media. In the Paris section, this romantic and fashionable capital provides Sleiman with the opportunity to feast his eyes on him. But at the same time, after the initial rejoicing, Paris was just a city full of meaningless behavior. The people in the street bowed to Sleiman inexplicably. The police spent time measuring the outdoor area at the coffee shop door.

Is the western world a paradise? In this film, Sleiman gives a clear negative answer. Paris producers told him that his films were not enough "Palestine", and that the developed countries' stereotypes of the third world were on the silver screen. Later, in the New York section, the director directly moved his dream onto the screen. People were so ordinary that they carried guns in the streets without any wandering. At the end of the movie, a circle of Sleiman came back to the Palestinian home. His neighbor still stole the fruits from his garden every now and then. But the young man who danced happily in the nightclub made the director with a white hair smile lightly.

Despite his criticizing tone, Sleiman did not forget to show hope at the end. The Palestinian nation has been in a long way in the long history of history, and perhaps it has been upheld by this spirit of perseverance. As a filmmaker, Sleiman knows how to laugh over the depression of the environment, and to make funny banter around the world so that the world can hear the voice coming from the Middle East. At this year's Cannes Film Festival, "Heaven must be" won the special prize of the jury, which is also an endorsement of the humanitarian and artistic value of the film.