PALESTINE 36 -- Palestinian Historical Drama Asserts Nation's Identity, Right to Exist

Review by Daniel Lima

As long as I can remember, people here in the United States have brushed off any attempt at dialogue about the brutality the Palestinians face as “too complicated” to discuss; these days, numerous polls show a decline in the American public’s sympathy for Israel in the face of blatant crimes against humanity. It is appropriate, then, for a historical epic like Palestine 36 to debut, providing a context for the roots of the conflict and an unwavering assertion of the rights of these people. It is an effort not without its flaws, but even those compliment the noble goal of offering a perspective that has historically been ignored, at least in the West.

The film chronicles the Arab revolt against British colonial government that began in 1936, a time where British authority disadvantaged the ingenious population in favor of Jewish refugees escaping persecution in Europe. Utilizing multiple perspectives, from sympathetic officials to fence-riding Arabs to the rural Palestinians facing attacks from both settlers and the British soldiers protecting them, a broad tapestry of the roots of current occupation and ethnic cleansing is drawn.​

No surprise that Palestine 36 is uncompromising and highly focused in its vision of the uprising, and how it informs what Palestine faces today. Colonialism is positioned as the root of all the violence; even the Zionist settlers are mere beneficiaries of an extractive government that fundamentally does not respect the rights of the people who call the land their home. The middle-class Palestinians that rush to placate that foreign authority are naive opportunists, insulated from the plight of their people by their own privilege, while those that take up arms do so because there is no legal recourse in a system that treats them as voiceless. The clarity of this perspective is undeniably refreshing today, when the Israeli government and its Western allies do their best to demonize those in the West Bank and Gaza, and pretend the barbarism we see today is the latest in an unending cycle of violence with no end, no beginning, and no culprit.

It will undoubtedly chafe some people that this film offers little nuance in its depiction of the era. Though the film gives the character with the ugliest moral outlook all the pro-Zionist dialogue, the decision to fixate on the British role in the conflict avoids contending with thornier questions about the rights of the Zionist settlers, and by extension sidesteps a conversation about the Zionist cause. Even if one is sympathetic to the struggle for Palestinian freedom, it does bear mentioning that the justification for their present-day oppression is often filtered through the lens of Zionism, ignoring the conditions that brought the state of Israel to being (namely, the apparent need for a Jewish state in the face of persecution balanced against the lack of Palestinian self-determination). Similarly, there are few hints of animosity against the Jewish settlers among the Arabs, a massaging of historical truth that allows the resistance to be seen as valiant freedom fighters against the colonial government and nothing more.

​It is true that this tale lacks the moral complexity of the likes of The Battle of Algiers, which managed to avoid any accusation of bothsiderism in an anti-colonial war for independence without sanding away the moral dimensions of that conflict. That being said, the same calls for nuance are heard plenty in real life, for years it has been the de facto establishment-friendly response in the West to any questioning of the Israeli occupation. That this is a mainstream movie, following the template of nationalist epics the world over, but rooting it from the perspective of a nation whose very existence still remains unrecognized by nearly a quarter of the world’s governments, means that even this uncomplicated narrative provides some measure of balance. In any case, falling short of one of the greatest anti-imperialist works in cinema is no great failure.

If the narrative goals of Palestine 36 can be excused, however, the same cannot be said of their execution. The film’s multi-pronged approach to its depiction of the uprising affords it a large cast of characters, representing the social strata of Palestine at the time. Unfortunately, this expansive ensemble precludes examining any of them in great depth, leaving them defined more by their archetypical role in the story than by their personalities. All the actors do what they can to lend these characters a sense of history beyond the script (the British performers in particular relish their villainous roles), but they can only do so much.

Production of this film began in Palestine, moved to Jordan for a year after the October 7th attacks and the subsequent upscaling of Israeli violence in Gaza, and then continued in Palestine in stops and starts. Considering those difficulties, it’s surprising to see how solidly crafted the end result is. The stately, pristine cinematography captures the majesty of the country’s landscapes, and the location shooting lends the film a great sense of place. All the period details, the crisp British uniforms against the traditional Arab fashion of the farmers against the Western attire of the urbane elites, the bombast of the action set pieces, all of these elements show the same level of polish as any nationalist wartime epic of today. For a movie shot in the midst of a warzone to be comparable to the likes of expensive productions from global superpowers, the likes of India’s 120 Bahadur and China’s Dead to Rights, is certainly impressive.

That is something of a double-edged sword. As technically proficient as those films are, they boast few idiosyncrasies, personal touches that would make them more than self-aggrandizing monuments to their nation’s glory. Their slickness and precision naturally preclude any aesthetic flourish that might clash with the expectations of a general audience, limiting the chance that any of these movies would stand out from one another. That same aversion is present here, and coupled with the streamlined narrative that forgoes both complicated characters and themes, it makes for a rather conventional, safe kind of prestige movie. Putting aside the context that it is a Palestinian film shot in Palestine, there is little here to differentiate it from any number of jingoistic blockbusters.
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Yet there is something commendable in even that. Every year, there is a deluge of chest-thumping nationalist screeds from America, India, China, powerful nations whose sovereignty goes unquestioned yet feel the need to produce epics portraying them as scrappy underdogs fighting against tyranny. Palestine 36 takes on the uncompromising affect of those films, but in the service of a people who have not had the right of self-determination for nearly a millennium. In adopting the tack of nationalist cinema the world over, this film asserts that the Palestinian people exist, that their culture endures in spite of inhumane restrictions, and they are as deserving of empathy and respect as any other.

Palestine 36 is now in theaters.

Rating: 3/5