The character played by Suleiman in It Must Be Heaven, an enigmatic man who observes everything and says nothing, travels to France and then to the United States in search of funding for a film. In Paris, his project is rebuffed for not being Palestinian enough although it does avoid exoticism and the conflict with the Israelis; in New York, he is directly ignored. What is genius about Suleiman’s film is the degree of perfection in his poetics of the absurd. Through this character, who watches it all from afar, everyday practices become mostly absurd. In Paris, a military parade, a ridiculous police checkpoint or a nurse who attends a man sleeping on the street as if he were a passenger in a commercial flight expose a human comedy not devoid of cruelty. Nonsensical situations also abound in New York, and what happens in that city when the character goes to a supermarket is the best gag of the year because, through ridicule, the acritical acceptation of unacceptable practices is “denatured” in this heterodox political film. The humorous deconstruction of delirium is a prerogative of only the best film comedians.

It Must Be Heaven, Elia Suleiman,  France- Qatar-Germany-Canada-Turkey- Palestine, 2019.

Written and directed by Elia Suleiman.

Roger Koza / Copyleft 2020