The Attack

There have been many films made about the conflict between Arab and Jew in Israel, and The Attack is another fine one, taking a very personal look at the issues involved. This one splits a husband and wife, and becomes as much about the secrets in a marriage as it about politics.

Released in 2012, the film was directed by Ziad Doueiri, and based on a popular novel. The star is Ali Suliman, who plays Amin, a successful Arab surgeon living in Tel Aviv. He is secular, and enjoys all the trappings of his life among the Jews. He also has a beautiful Christian wife, Reymonde Amsalem.

The film opens with them parting for a few days, as she is heading to her grandfather's house. He accepts an award from a Jewish organization. Later, while at the hospital, an explosion is heard. Bodies are brought to the hospital. Seventeen people die, including 11 children. Then Suliman is called to the morgue. In a body bag only partially filled, he identifies his wife.

The police say she was the suicide bomber, and they naturally suspect he was an accomplice of some sorts. He maintains she must be innocent, and eventually they let him go, but insist she was the bomber. After he receives a posthumous letter from her, he realizes the police are right, and tries to find out how she could have done such a horrible thing.

I found the first half of the film more interesting, when Suliman slowly has to come to grips with the fact that he didn't know his wife half of as much as he thought he did. The detective asks him why his wife wasn't with him on the evening of his award, the biggest night of his life. Later, we see the argument that erupted over that. A person might watch this and say that there is no way a person couldn't keep that part of themselves secret, but I think they could and often do.

The second half, which has Suliman travel to Nablus, a hotbed of terrorists, is less interesting. He's on kind of a detective story, peeling back the layers of the onion to find the source of his wife's conversion, and it ends up exactly where one might think it does, based on a simple understanding of foreshadowing.

As a study of marriage, I give The Attack high marks--as a study of Israeli-Arab politics, not so much.