O Jerusalem


Rating = C+

This film tells a piece of the story told in Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins' best selling 1972 book Oh, Jerusalem. The film has low production production values, or at least seemed to have when I saw it projected on a large screen from a theatrical release DVD. The acting was also very “basic.” All in all the movie seemed like it had been made contemporaneously with the events being described.

The movie did a good job of providing balance between the Arab and Jewish views of the events. It also reasonably clear that the major colonial powers were continuously stirring the pot for their own advantage. We saw the film on January 11, 2008, on essentially the day that President Bush announced that he expected an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement by the time he leaves office, which would be 60 years after the events shown in this film, 60 years of continuous disagreement and often times open warfare: obviously there is no end in sight for various world powers pretending to be interested in settling the situation.

[2008-01-11]