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It's 6 a.m., and Rana has ten hours to find her lover, convince him to get married, then convince her father to accept her fiancee, and then gather everyone for the ceremony. Sounds like a particularly harebrained, Hollywood plot, doesn't it? Rana's Wedding is, in fact, a delightful and touching film set in Jerusalem, with a Palestinian cast and crew, and it opens this Friday at the Music Box theater.

Rana (Clara Khoury) is a 17-year-old young woman who's been given an ultimatum by her father. She must get married by 4 p.m. or come with him to Egypt. She's not sure she's ready to be married, but she doesn't want to leave Jerusalem and her friends behind. So she rises early in the morning and goes looking for Khalil (Khalifa Natour), but that's easier said than done. He's not picking up his cell phone, and no one seems to know where he is. What follows is a whirlwind tour through Jerusalem and parts of the West Bank. Eventually, Rana finds Khalil, but her problems are far from over.

Director Hany Abu-Assad tells the tale (written by Liana Badr and Ihab Lamey) with visual style and grace. His landscape shots are striking, even when he's showing a pile of rubble. And though you can catch the famous Dome of the Rock mosque in a number of scenes, he's not hitting the tourist spots as much as he's presenting Palestinian life, both good and bad. At times, he lets his artistic side get away from him. There are a couple point-of-view shots that are puzzling in their lack of reference. But his credit sequence, which combines still pictures with regular film, is a work of genuine beauty.

Making enormous contributions to the film's success are the two leads, Clara Khoury and Khalifa Natour. Khoury isn't quite convincing as a teenager (I would've guessed 20-21-years-old), but she has a wonderful grace about her. When Khalil does something particularly silly, her face slowly breaks into a grin that you want her to hold forever. Natour is equally good in a somewhat smaller role. A scene with him pantomiming to a security camera is both funny and poignant.

Rana's Wedding is also a beautiful portrait of a place--East Jerusalem and its West Bank "suburbs." We in the audience are given a tour of this historic area, from the ancient, walled walkways to the roadside markets to the hills and desert surrounding the city. It's such a different view than what we see on the evening news and a strong reminder that a few seconds of tv footage can't begin to show us what a place and people are like. Even educated folk, who should be naturally distrustful of the media's coverage, might be surprised by the contrast. The Palestinians are presented as, gasp, real people who fall in love, struggle with their families, and have the same desires and problems that people do the world over.

Not that contemporary politics are absent. In one scene, two characters watch the Israeli government demolish a house, and soldiers are a near universal presence. But the film treats political events as a part of life, not the sum of life. Roadblocks and rock throwers are inconvenient and the seething anger at the occupation lies always beneath the surface, but they don't dominate every aspect of life. Rather, we also see people buying and selling at the market, actors and directors trying to put on a play, fathers quarreling with their daughters, and lovers hoping to get married. Rana's Wedding is a marvelous reminder of the universal human condition--which itself reminds us that we're not as different as the demagogues would have us think.

After the screening, my friend Garth mentioned that he'd love to see this paired with another Palestinian movie, Divine Intervention. But I disagree. That film fed into the Palestinian-as-political-animal motif, that behind every head scarf lies a terrorist. Rana's Wedding may get a little strident at the end, when a beautiful but politically charged poem is read, but its better side works to bridge the barriers, not create new ones. I'd rather see it paired with Broken Wings, a touching Israeli family drama that'll be released later this spring. Both films feature powerful actors portraying universal stories. They don't gloss over the genuine issues that divide us, but they also point to the ray of hope that might lead the way to a better society.  

J. Robert Parks   1/15/2004