Literature is full of doubles, twins-separated-at-birth, and doppelgängers. Though Eyad, born into a poor but happy family in the West Bank, has two brothers, he doesn’t meet his symbolic twin until the late ’80s, when he earns a slot at a prestigious Jerusalem boarding school.
He’s the only Arab there, an unfashionable math whiz made a double outcast by his nerd status and Hebrew mispronunciations. (The difference between B and P forms a running joke that doesn’t really translate.)
Teenage Eyad is played by Tawfeek Barhom, though we meet him first during 1982, when his father (Ali Suliman, of “The Kingdom” and “Paradise Now”) is hoping the Israeli invasion of Lebanon will lead to disaster. This turns out to be one of many disappointments for Salah, an educated man who — like all others around him — can only find manual-labor jobs. There are no better prospects in the occupied territories for his sons, and the mood is one of glum and sometimes comic resignation.
Director Eran Riklis (“Lemon Tree,” “The Syrian Bride”) often has his characters watching and commenting upon the wars and politics on TV, yet such conflict seems remote to them. Though Saddam’s Scuds will later fly overhead — Eyad’s father again vainly cursing Israel, now to his son’s embarrassment — there’s no bloodshed in this steady, sober, unsurprising picture, no car bombs or suicide vests.
Based on the autobiographical novels of Sayed Kashua (a Haaretz columnist who also wrote the script), this is a drama of assimilation and ethnic amnesia. And for Eyad, that latter process involves his belated twin: Yonathan (Michael Moshonov), a sarcastic Joy Division-loving teenager with CP, confined to a wheelchair, whose condition gradually worsens during his friendship with Eyad.
I’m assuming there was no such figure in Kashua’s Horatio Alger rise in the media (he later created a popular Israeli TV show and now lives in Chicago). Kashua surely had many such Jewish friends and cultural confusions during those years — as when Eyad, trapped by a curfew, celebrates Passover with Yonathan and his single mother Edna (Yaël Abecassis, of Kadosh).
However, since our maturing protagonist is a watchful, writerly sort, it’s the rancorous Yonathan who’s the most interesting character here. His politics are far left of Eyad’s. He insults Eyad’s sweet Jewish girlfriend (you can predict the opposition in both their families). And he imparts the film’s bitter motto with more economy than Riklis: Heredity is destiny, he tells Eyad; being an Arab is a disability not unlike his own.
Only once — in his literature class, discussing token Arabs and racism — does Eyad speak with the same candor. (One wishes for the cross-cultural wit of Sherman Alexie, the comedy, pride, and shame of escaping the stereotypes of the rez.) More of it, and more rude surprises, would’ve benefited the movie, whose ending is easy to guess if symbolically apt.
The main drama here is the passing of time — over a decade, from boy to young man — and the assumption of a new skin. While trying, with increasing success, to pass as a carefree young Israeli, Eyad simply wants education, freedom, and better prospects. But to achieve that, the movie unhappily suggests, means forsaking one’s culture. Any triumph here feels equally a loss.
“A Borrowed Identity”
Rating: Not rated
Showing: Sundance Cinemas Seattle
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