Film Notes

'Wajib': Locarno Review.

A family wedding in Palestine puts strain on a father-son relationship in this wry family drama.

A prodigal son’s Palestinian homecoming is marked by family obligations, comforting white lies and concerted efforts at matchmaking in Wajib, a wryly-observed family drama from writer/director Annemarie Jacir. The modest, understated nature of the production probably works against great commercial expectations, but the writing is sharp and the situations should strike a universal chord across the generation gap. Substantial festival interest should follow a world premiere in Locarno.

Loosely inspired by events in her own family, Jacir’s film follows Shadi (Saleh Bakri) as he returns to Nazareth for the wedding of his sister Amal (Maria Zreik). Tradition dictates that he should accompany his schoolteacher father Abu Shadi ( Mohammad Bakri) as they personally hand deliver wedding invitations to a large extended family, friends and anyone else considered an essential guest.

Abu Shadi is a schoolteacher, divorced from a wife who left him and the country many years ago. It becomes clear that the pain of that is still raw. Shadi is an architect who now lives in Rome with his girlfriend. Initial scenes suggest a distance between them. They are as polite as two strangers, but eventually niggling comments and tensions rise to the surface.

Encounters with family members reveal that Abu Shadi has been less than truthful about his son. He has neglected to mention that he gave up his medical studies and has seen no reason to correct those who think he is living in America or assume that he is intent on coming back to Nazareth. Abu Shadi also cannot resist an opportunity to pique his son’s interest in any available woman. After one warm reunion, he ruefully comments: ” It’s too bad people don’t marry their cousins any more.”

Wajib could almost be called a road movie as father and son spend a good deal of their time driving between destinations in Nazareth. There is a faint echo of Kiarostami films, especially Ten (2002), as we witness the two men seated side by side and listen to their interactions. Their clashes of values, aesthetics and even feelings about Nazareth pepper the film with wry chuckles. Everything becomes a battlefield, with Abu Shadi even critical of his son’s wardrobe and man bun hairstyle.

Anyone can recognise that these are the conversations one has with a well-meaning parent, where exasperation hides behind a facade of saintly patience. The film doesn’t seem overtly political, but commentary heard on the car radio refers to Israel’s control of exports and Nazareth is depicted as a city where rubbish is piled up on the streets, traffic is impossible and minor aggravations easily boil over into open conflict.

The political becomes more apparent when the two men deliver some home truths about why Shadi had to leave Nazareth, and how different the country feels in exile compared to the experience of those who still live in it every day.

Naturalistic, nicely paced and well played by the lead actors, Wajib succeeds at making us invest in its fragile father/son relationship and willing them to acknowledge that there is more that unites them than threatens to drive them apart.

ALLAN HUNTER, Screen Daily, 5 AUGUST 2017.

Wajib review – raw nerves beneath the ancient hurts.

Annemarie Jacir pits tradition against modernity in this bittersweet comedy about a father driving around Nazareth with his hipster architect son.

Path-breaking Palestinian writer-director Annemarie Jacir has made three feature films: Salt of This Sea (2008), When I Saw You (2012), and now Wajib, which has proved a prize-winning festival favourite since premiering at Locarno last year. As with both of her previous features, Jacir’s latest was selected as the official Palestinian entry for the foreign-language film Oscar, but failed to gain a nomination.

Though overlooked by the Academy, Jacir continues to impress with this poignant, bittersweet comedy of estrangement and identity, in which a traditional father and his hipster son travel around Nazareth, fulfilling an ancient ritual while arguing about the state of the modern world. Dry humour and understated heartbreak intersect as Jacir deftly blends the personal and the political in deceptively effortless fashion.

It’s the run-up to Christmas, and tacky festive decorations are everywhere in Nazareth. Schoolteacher Abu Shadi (Mohammad Bakri) is dotingly proud of his daughter, Amal (Maria Zreik), who is about to get married. It is Abu Shadi’s duty (the wajib of the title) to ensure that the wedding invitations are hand-delivered to each and every guest – a formidable task. So Amal’s brother Shadi (regular Jacir collaborator Saleh Bakri, real-life son of Mohammad Bakri) has come home to help his father. Shadi now lives a cosmopolitan life in Italy (“Not America? Never mind…”), where he is an aspiring architect. But his father wants him to come back to Nazareth, a wish that has long provoked tension between them.

Driving from house to house, the pair present a united front, with the father proving a smiling master of diplomacy with all those whom he visits. Alone in the car, though, the pair squabble, with Shadi bemoaning the state of his former home town (“beautiful architecture ruined with plastic tarp”) and scolding his father for failing to take a post-heart-attack smoking ban seriously. As for Abu Shadi, his gentle mocking of his son’s European hairdo and fancy shirts (“they dress like that in Italy?”) masks deeper grievances.

Shadi’s girlfriend, Nada, is the daughter of a high-profile “intellectual”, for whose radical politics Abu Shadi has no time. (“Those poor PLO guys,” he says sarcastically of Nada’s wealthy father, “they have a difficult life.”)

Gradually, we learn that Abu Shadi sent his son away many years ago, when Shadi’s own political affiliations (“It was a film club!”) put his safety in danger. Abu Shadi’s wife, too, has flown the coop, leaving her family for a new life in America – a move that her son respects and admires, to his father’s barely concealed dismay.

“Family makes you crazy,” Jacir has said – a truism that is played out in this minutely observed study of conflicting loyalties. At the heart of the piece is a simple and universal conundrum: the tension between pursuing your dreams or remaining committed to your roots.

Politics provide the background noise, whether it’s Shadi’s anger at the presence of soldiers in a local cafe, or the fear that Abu Shadi feels after accidentally hitting a dog with his car in the wrong neighbourhood. He’s up for promotion to headmaster, but to achieve his goal he must stay on the right side of the same people who first drove his son away, even inviting them to his daughter’s wedding.

What’s most impressive is the way Jacir reveals these complex intertwining backstories through apparently incidental interaction. With a superb lightness of touch she uncovers the ancient hurts with which these characters wrestle, laying bare the raw nerves beneath the polite smiles.

Often, it’s not what they say, but what they don’t say that tells us the most.Trapped together in a battered old car, father and son endure awkward silences that speak volumes about their shared history. When voices are finally raised in the film’s last act, it comes as something of a shock.

There is plenty of laughter too, from a running gag about the awfulness of wedding singer Fawzi Baloot (“his voice is horrible!”) to a deadpan slapstick interlude involving a pet bird and an injured finger. Antoine Héberlé’s hand-held camera captures the nuances of comedy and tragedy alike, keeping us close to the protagonists without ever feeling intrusive. The result is a film of surprising warmth and generosity, which takes a situation riven by discord and turns it into a melancholy song of resolution.

Mark Kermode, The Observer, 16 Sep 2018.

What you thought about Wajib - The Wedding Invitation

Film Responses

Collated Response Comments

132 members and guests attended the screening of Wajib. The 69 responses represent a response rate of 51.51%. Thank you so much for your observations and please keep them coming over the rest of the season. You have the comments slip but also are able to comment on the website or by email to filmcomments@godalmingfilmsoc.org.uk.

We did know that this would be a very different experience to Dogman and most of you enjoyed the film but one commentator had this to say “Rather rambling although making a worthwhile point about identity in Palestine.  I found the series of vignettes rather unsatisfactory (like looking into a series of railway compartments one after the other) and didn’t get the sense of place that Dogman provided.  Dogman, incidentally, stayed top of mind for several days, which shows the difficulty of instant comment!” We also had this “whilst sometimes too slow, that in itself reflected the pace of a Nazarene winter life. The themes of father/son, intergenerational & family relationships were heightened in the context of the Palestinian plight. I enjoyed seeing the city of Nazareth, its people, their daily lives and their traditions very carefully portrayed. The uncomfortable political situation was quietly ever present but did not overshadow the struggle between father and son to maintain some common ground between them”. 

“A slow paced but interesting slice of Palestinian life, with an emotional undercurrent that built over the course of the film. With nice touches of humour but also a "quietly angry" portrayal of the difficulties of Palestinian life demonstrated through the subtle but poignant lives of an extended family”.

“A woman directing a Palestinian film suggested we might have something different, exotic, and unusual. Instead what we got was something astonishingly, warmly, convincingly familiar. All the awkward complexities of a tangled family life are portrayed here in a gentle continuous exposition as the father and son scratch away at each other in the manner of the best road trip movies from 'It happened one night', 'The sure thing' and 'Trains, planes and automobiles' on down. They love their family, the son with all the easy certainties of the ex-pat, reprising the cliché of the returning prodigal son discovering all is not as he remembered it of "Beautiful girls' amongst others, the father with the uncomfortable compromises and generosity required to make life work. The politics are unavoidable but thankfully not intrusive. The family are as colourful and entertaining a bunch as any Irish, Jewish or Italian/American Hollywood creation but it is the central pairing that hold the film and we are at once cheered and saddened as the fissures in the family relationships are gradually revealed and we are treated to a believably downbeat finale as the they acknowledge an unspoken truce, for the good of all, over a cigarette. Beautifully balanced, lovely humour”. 

“Pleasing”. “It widened my understanding of Palestinian Christian’s daily life and their environment. A very good watch”. “A fascinating insight into Palestinian life and a beautiful portrayal of a father/son relationship”. “Very enjoyable. I loved the many interiors, scenes of Nazareth and the relationships”. “Lovely well-paced film with amazing dialogue and humorous scenes”. “A slow paced but interesting way of explaining the issues involved in living in Nazareth. Nice sparks of humour to enliven the tension between father and son. Fascinating insight into family life”. “A wonderfully expressive face on the father and suitably more stern than from the son. A gentle but telling film”. “Slow moving but pleasant and human”.

“A fascinating story about the father who still lived in Nazareth and the son who had left leading to different perspectives. A moving relationship between father and son – awkward but loving – lovely gentle humour in the film”. “Great example of the complexity of family relationships/ generation differences and constant debate between tradition and new thinking”. “An understanding between them at last. Excellent rapport between the actors! Again no background music. Great. The tension between traditional and modern life”. “Slow moving but riveting”. “Easy to watch but with depth. Characters beautifully drawn, with the two protagonists not descending into stereotypes. Each showing surprising weaknesses, strengths and sensitivities”.

“See no need for blood and bodies to have a good time. A lovely road movie and a slow meditative finding of each other”. A lovely final shot. Can we see more films by the same director please?” “Very different – no big drama, but enjoyable.” “What an absorbing film. Wonderful observation of a father/son relationship. Outstanding performances by the two leads”. “Very interesting film. Cleverly done”. “Fantastic talking between father and son”. “Excellent performances”. “A delightful film, although I found the burden of expectation on everyone claustrophobic! No wonder the mother left”.

“Like the real father and son pair. Very touching”. “How do Palestinian directors make such sensitive films?” “Very understated, a lovely portrayal of life in Israel for a typical Palestinian”. “Found Nazareth very interesting”. “Very true to life. Good filming”. “So true to Palestinian people and their lives + subtle hints at Israel as occupiers”. “Lovely film. Love these lives of others. Aren’t we all the same really”. “Very good. Showed life in Nazareth, Palestine with humour”. “Slow – even a bit tedious. Some of the tensions very compelling, often amusing but still quite hard work”. “Predictable, tedious in parts”. “Interesting characters and some enlightening things about Palestine – but a bit boring”. “Interesting but fatally slow. Technically good. Acting good. But I fell asleep once!” “Rather Slow”. “Boring”. “ A big theme smothered in far too many tedious visits”.