Get our free newsletter
The Attack seems designed to appeal more to Westerners, though, anyway. His protagonist, Amin (Ali Sullman), begins as a mere observer of the bloody conflict between Israel and Palestine. When we first meet him, he is receiving an award from the local medical board that uses him as a tool to promote their tolerance. In Amin’s narrow world, Jews and Muslims can get along just fine, a perspective that leaves him unprepared for the impending double dose of reality: His wife is killed in a terrorist attack, and grief turns to confusion when he learns that his wife may not have been the victim but the perpetrator—-a suicide bomber.
The film often seems poised to lean towards didacticism, but Douieri consistently foregoes heavy-handed political statements and stays focused on Amin’s personal journey. With the society that once accepted his differences now viewing him as a possible accomplice to his wife’s crimes, Amin becomes the outsider he never felt like before. After a brutal interrogation from a police inspector that removes any remnants of his dignity, he leaves his home in Tel Aviv and sets out on a suicide mission of his own: to find and confront the terrorist leader he believes brainwashed his wife.
Amin is the center of every scene, and Sullman gives a knockout performance, subtly and effectively depicting each stage of grief. But Doueiri still deserves the lion’s share of praise. Effortlessly mixing genres—-the tense political drama takes on elements of film noir in the film’s second half when Amin plays detective in the terrorist-controlled region of Nablus—-the director always keeps his eyes on Amin’s character. Eventually, the political elements recede into the background, and we are left with a close study of grief overcome.
Meanwhile, The Attack is being pitched to the public as a political film. Doueiri’s desire to ease tension between Jews and Arabs is admirable, but it looks like the Arab League will quash that particular ambition; in Arab League nations, it can only be viewed by those who are willing to risk arrest to see it. It’s a shame because his film offers a rare evenhanded approach to the issue, which it achieves by following an old, unrelated political axiom: The personal is political.