Eran Riklis
Lemon Tree

Lemon Tree 

It scents the air, pleasantly tickles the nostrils, delights the view by beautifying the landscape. Imagine standing there, observing from the height of a window sill, a sunset with rows regularly kissed by a stubborn sun now on the verge of setting. With one last, indescribable effort, it casts one final beam of light in the direction of that wrinkled, shiny peel; a final brushstroke before going to sleep. It's an image, that of the orchard (vineyard), that I have the shameless fortune of savoring every day from my room at home. It's something that has the power to calm me, it refreshes and purifies me. But it is not my life.

Salma lives in the resounding silence of a solitary existence capable of sharpening every slight noise. The clear click of the knife hitting the empty plate on a deserted table is a visual and sonic expression of the rawest loneliness. She maintains the connection with the past, with the children who have grown up and followed their paths, and the husband who died prematurely, by cultivating and caring for that lemon orchard that once made them a family. She has nothing beyond this.

A machine gun. The barrel of a rifle with a telescope at dusk could easily hide among those thick and lush branches. The rows are dense; Salma, why did you give them all that water and why did you prune them so well to make them grow this way? Can't you see it looks like a damn labyrinth? Salma, it's no longer a triumph of nature, it's not the memory of the past, but a dangerous threat. The fact that for 50 years the only product that has come out has been tanks of lemonade sold means little; actually nothing. Now everything changes. It's a weed that needs to be uprooted.

Do you understand? Salma, listen to me. The Israeli Minister of Security has decided to live opposite your orchard. At the border. It's a death sentence for that mix of wood, leaves, and fruits. What can those beautiful weeds mean in relation to national security? To you, it may be everything, but there you have those 300 plants measured with objective and indisputable judgment: 2 wads of undeserved, yet granted magnanimity. Banknotes that, mind you, even if you wanted to take them, you could not accept. Damn, would you be crazy enough to get paid with dirty Israeli wads? What would your community think?

Salma, please, reason. You're getting older, so carry on living in silence and keep your head down as you always have. Swallow this too. Who do you think you are? The only one? Want me to tell you how many houses, not orchards, have been demolished by military tribunal decisions for the same reasons? After all, you're lucky: you can always live within your four walls even if you live a stone's throw from the border. That's not nothing. And what do you do instead? Go to court against the Israeli state. A poor and simple Palestinian woman. Don't you realize how pathetic your charade is: lemons against the Israeli state all the way to the Supreme Court? This isn't an American film, you'll get hurt. No, from your icy gaze, you seem as hard and determined as a wall. The one they are building. Salma, what are you doing? You're getting too close to that young lawyer. Be careful, don't try to fall in love. Would you also want to dishonor your husband?

Mira, you are a grown woman who turns heads with her beauty. Once you loved him; God, how you believed him when he spoke to you, holding your hand. You were truly convinced he was the right person to resolve an endless conflict. Wrinkles are starting to carve your beautiful face, but it's your eyes that testify to the winters passed. You were already sad for a long time; well before leaving for the border after his coveted appointment. How many false dinners, false circumstantial smiles to get there. You had learned to swallow disappointments. A nice gulp of water and down it goes, the inability to have a child, accept his lover, and acknowledge his mediocrity and similarity with his predecessors. But to see him bow to some lemons. You tried to take the usual large glass, Mira, but this time the pill won't go down. It stays stuck there. Perhaps you would have managed if you hadn't met that look of granite, pride, disdain, and anger.

Happy ending. For the first time, the Supreme Court revises a military tribunal's decision in favor of Palestinians. Salma, they won't be uprooted. But do you realize? Your stubbornness has taken you beyond any imagination. TVs speak of nothing but your insignificant lemon field. Only 150 will be pruned. They won't bear fruit and will be 30 centimeters high, but you have won. It's a resounding celebration. The camera can barely rise above the wall, now erected, to capture the cemetery of dust and trunks: now it's no longer a threat.

And yet, that slash that cuts me as the credits roll doesn't seem like a smile.

It's a tartaguresque film, able to convey strong feelings almost without the use of words. It’s not the dialogues but the gestures, the intersections of eyes, that create and best render an atmosphere of borders, of deep injustice. Of anger you want to scream, but instead, you often have to shove down your throat. Two hands brushing, a slow embrace of lips for an impossible love. Picking up the lemons fallen at night. The beautiful past you want to keep alive, when with your husband you went to Israel to sell the fruits of cultivating the land. Glances between two women for a film that sends a timid message of bitter feminist hope with a lemon flavor speaking of two prisoners; of different and so similar situations.

I'm certainly not the first to discover Hiam Abbass. This beautiful woman is an actress of crystalline talent. In “The Lemon Tree” in my opinion, she reaches her peak, even more so than in "The Visitor". She is the backbone of a difficult film that addresses the problem of forced coexistence with depth starting from the home garden. Without her precious performance, the film would have fallen and lost much of its strength. With superior facial expressiveness, she has the ability to grip your gut with the mere gesture of bending down to pick her precious fruits and freeze you with a glance behind a metal fence.

I rise from my seat. Ten people for a great film that I appreciated much more than the good "The Syrian Bride" by the same director.