Watching this documentary is like watching people who are stuck in bad dream.
And the most terrifying part is: They know they're dreaming but are unable, try as they might, to jolt themselves awake, trapped forever in a permanent nightmare.
What struck me most about this film is the mood and atmosphere. As documentaries go, this one contains very few frills or embellishments. Music is used sparingly, punctuating extended periods of eerie silence. And yet the atmosphere is haunting and surreal, seeming to blur the line between fantasy and reality.
This documentary is shown through the eyes of three children in Gaza whose family members are killed during Israel's 22-day assault from late 2008 to early 2009, known as Operation Cast Lead.
The "operation" killed 1,400 Palestinians, more than three-quarters of them civilians, including 350 children. Some 6,800 homes were completely destroyed and tens of thousands of others damaged by Israeli bombing, which left behind 600,000 tons of rubble.
Gaza is a tiny strip of land, about 25 miles long and five miles wide, and is widely regarded as one of the most densely populated places on Earth. Nearly half of its 1.5 million inhabitants (the total population at the time of Cast Lead) are children.
"Tears of Gaza" is told primarily through the eyes of three of these children, who are mourning the deaths of some of their family members killed by Israeli airstrikes.
The feeling of hopeless and destitution colors almost every second of this film. Even when people seem to be enjoying themselves - watching TV, building sand castles on the beach, dancing and singing and clapping during a nighttime bachelor party - an eerie gloom hangs palpably overhead, permeating every moment of existence.
The use of the term "open-air prison" to describe Gaza is routinely derided by Israeli apologists as hysterical propaganda, but after watching "Tears of Gaza," it begins to seem more like a cruel euphemism.
The activities of daily life are frequently interrupted by drones and helicopters buzzing overhead, the Israeli wardens keeping an ever-watchful eye on their Palestinian prisoners. Israeli boats patrol the seas and fire warning shots to ensure that Palestinian fishermen don't travel more than three miles off shore. Take a moment to imagine what it would be like to gaze out at the horizon of an infinite ocean and yet feeling - knowing - that you are trapped. As scholar Tareq Baconi puts it in his book "Hamas Contained," daily life in Gaza is characterized by "endless motion in stillness."
The film doesn't show it, but a giant "security" fence surrounds every inch of Gaza's perimeter, with Israel studiously controlling what goes in and what goes out, even going so far as to calculate the calories of the food allowed into Gaza at just above starvation-level.
The somber scenes are violently punctuated by the whoosh and crash of an Israeli bomb, followed by extremely graphic close-up footage of the aftermath - mass panic, sirens wailing, throngs of people shouting and converging at the site of a demolished home, the lifeless and bloody bodies of children being pulled from the rubble, rushed into the hospital on stretchers, their tiny bodies writhing during intubation, half-conscious infants gurgling on their own vomit, their mothers and fathers sobbing uncontrollably and cursing their fate.
In one scene, a little girl recounts the deaths of her family members in an Israeli airstrike. "Life is hard," she says. "Really hard." She gives the impression of being mature and hardened beyond her years, but then she suddenly collapses to one knee and buries her head in the crook of of arm, sobbing. Her mother has to help her to her feet. She can barley stand, her head drooping, all the life drained from her body. She is led into the family's tent to lie down.
These are the "Tears of Gaza."
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