Palestine 36

Directed by Annemarie Jacir, Palestine 36 explores the events leading up to the Great Palestinian Revolt of 1936 through the eyes of several characters – including Karim Daoud Anaya’s Yusuf, Jeremy Irons’ Wauchope, and Hiam Abbas’ Hiam Abbass. It’s a potentially stirring and electrifying premise that is, for the most part, employed to woefully (and depressingly) underwhelming effect by Jacir, as the filmmaker, armed with her own screenplay, delivers a sluggish, dramatically-inert misfire that stumbles from one lackluster encounter and set-piece to the next – with the arms-length atmosphere compounded by a lack of three-dimensional characters and a recurring emphasis on laughably on-the-nose bits of dialogue. (These figures are, more often than not, mere mouthpieces for Jacir’s less-than-subtle messaging.) And while the picture admittedly does include a small handful of stirring moments, Palestine 36 primarily comes off as an amateurish, unconvincing would-be epic that squanders its searing real-life setup to a progressively disheartening degree – which is a shame, certainly, given the decidedly topical nature of the movie’s subject matter.

*1/2 out of ****