hyped garbage

A Disappointing Continuation

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

How does one tell a story about something as huge and complicated as the Arab/Israeli conflict? This 2008 Israeli film - made with German and French support - meets the challenge by reducing the situation to a struggle over a grove of lemon trees. This particular grove is owned by a Palestinian woman Salma Zidane (played wonderfully by Hiam Abbass) located on the Israel/West Bank border where the new Israeli Minister of Defence Israel Navon (Doron Tavory) chooses to make his home with attendant security issues that are eventually taken all the way to the Israeli Supreme Court. If this seems a rather contrived situation, then it's as well to appreciate that the story is inspired by the actual case of Minister Shaul Mofaz. There are no real villains in this well-intentioned, quietly understated tale, just conflicting views of culture and entitlement that lie at the heart of the wider conflict itself that seems without end.

First of all, Hiam Abbass (The Visitor, Amreeka) once more demonstrates how she can portray reactions to heartbreaking with dignity and resilience. She is a truly amazing actress. Based on an amalgam of true incidents, the Lemon Tree serves from beginning to end as a parable for what we all hope and what most of u (but not all) believe to be the majority of well-meaning human beings on both sides. Personally, they mean no harm; they wish that the violence would go away and that they could live their lives as "good neighbors" in the words of Defense Minister's wife Mira Navon (hauntingly portrayed by Rona Lipaz-Michal). However, the courage to stand up to one's own peoples to cross the borders is rare. Even when summoned, it is squashed quickly by well- meaning people afraid of the consequences. The movie remains true to itself and its characters throughout. There are few callous stereotypes to be found here. Yet, in the words of The Temptation in Ball of Confusion (NOT part of this wonderful soundtrack), "the band plays on." Relentlessly. The story is an almost perfect parable for the heart of the entire situation. As a movie, however, I found 30 minutes of it too repetitive, just underscoring again and again the mindless yet entrenched obstacles. As an even-handed political dissertation, such defenses should earn any PhD candidate her or his "A". As entertainment, however, it hurts the pacing enough that one watching on DVD needs to splash cold water on one's face to make it all the way to the end. Please do so, however, because the ending is magnificent.Worth seeing, just a bit slow in patches.

" Lemon Tree" is a beautifully told story about the life in Israel. In order to assure security of the new house of the minister of Defence, the state orders that the lemon grove that belongs to a Palestinian widow next door has to be cut down. Lets not have silly notions about justice and democracy. How could the unimportant lonely women win? The bigger issue at stake here is how absolutely helpless her position is. Between oppressive Israeli regime and equally oppressive conservative, patriarchal Muslim culture, she had to be squashed. In the filthy game of politics average people and their unimportant needs never stood a chance. Here or there.

"The Lemon Tree" is a picture that deals with a "hot" subject in low-key, human terms, but fails to really connect on a human level. The leads all deliver solid performances but they don't have much to work with. Characters are drawn in subtle sketches, but the sketches fail to hint at anything other than sketches and there is less subtext than the dialogue's minimalism would suggest. The film attempts to draw parallels between the alienated Israeli minister's wife and the alienated Palestinian widow, but both characters are too passive to create any real drama and neither of them really change. The film even goes as far as to avoid showing on screen some of the characters' pivotal moments, which suggests that the writer-director didn't know his characters well enough to show us how they would behave. A film which appears to be about women on the sidelines of a conflict proves itself to be more about women who are on the sidelines of life itself, but it seems to believe it is making a statement about the nature of national conflicts. Politics kept this viewer interested during the film's short running time, but, politics aside, the film is a minor exercise in the display of pretty actresses and Judean landscapes. Pretty actresses and Judean landscapes nearly make this film worth the price of admission but in a year when Israel also produced "Waltz With Bashir," this one should barely register.