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The story tells of a group of young unwitting Estonian girls smuggled through Egypt to be auctioned off as prostitutes in Israel, and of their initiation into this trade of flesh, and finally to the accidental freeing of the one girl who most fought for her freedom. Promised Land by Gitaï is the second Israeli film of the year to take on the subject of prostitution in modern day Israel. However, unlike Keren Yedaya's film Or (Mon Trésor) which bring a fresh cinematographic and philosophic approach to this social problem, Gitaï's film gets dragged down by its moralizing tone, and exclusive camera. The story tells of a group of young unwitting Estonian girls smuggled through Egypt to be auctioned off as prostitutes in Israel, and of their initiation into this trade of flesh, and finally to the accidental freeing of the one girl who most fought for her freedom. From the first images, one is assaulted by the fact that the camera is always forcing us to see something something. The first scene is the smuggling scene in which some Bedouin smugglers camp for their night before taking the girls up to Israel. At this point in time the girls are still unaware of their future fate (although the construction of the scene is such that one wonders how they could not know), and we witness the first scene of violence, a rape of one of the younger girls. The scene is filmed with an overused jittery camera style in order to impose a sort of 'realism' on the events. But this device being so overused (both in general and in his film), that it confers the exact opposite. His characters, the naïve victims of prostitution are poorly constructed as well. They seem to be nothing more that paper dolls which are mechanically and predictably moved in order to forward his particular ideology. Ringing particularly empty is the aging bordello mistress played by Hanna Schygulla, who tries half-heartedly to soften the plow of their entry into prostitution and offers only vacuous straw men arguments and explanations. This agenda of his to show us the ills of prostitution only results in giving the film a dry moralizing tone, and is illustrated by the trite linguistic and visual metaphors that the film is replete with. The title itself "Promised Land" (also the name of the bordello in which the girls will later be), is a good example of the heavy-handedness that will later guide the entire film. In one scene in which the girls are manhandled and then auctioned off becomes overbearing with its too obvious symbolism, and instead of making us identify with the characters, it in fact removes any possibility for pathos with them. The film is also pedantic visually. Instead of presenting the viewer with characters which we would later try to understand and perhaps even approach, Gitaï insists upon showing everything, most notably by limiting the frame of his camera to close ups of the body parts and faces of those he wants us to see. Unlike Yedaya's Mon Trésor, which presents us characters who skirt around the edge of the screen; who are human and tragic because of their very distance which we must try to cross as viewers, Gitaï's style of filming presents us with (unconvincing) prefabricated constructs. The essential visual flaw that resonates throughout the film, is the feeling that Gitaï has no confidence, or even a certain contempt for the viewers of his films, which is why he forces himself to show, where he should be permitting us to see and judge for ourselves.. On a linguistic level, the film is no better. When the girls are finally crossed over the border, there is a scene where they must shower and change for their induction into their lives as prostitutes. The muscle-bound black-clad mafiosos unconvincingly repeat "come on!" "Let's Go" "Fast", for no apparent reason other than to fit the male characters into their roles as the bad guys. Or, when the girls are on the back of a truck on the way to Haifa one of them peeks out and seeing a dirty, half destroyed city says "It looks like the city's under curfew. Oh There's a sign. It says Ramallah" To be of course later contrasted with when they later arrive in Israel, the land of their enslavement and looking at the nice hotels, she says "It's so nice and civilized." Gitaï presents a film about an important issue, but which is undone by his own preconceived ideological objective. Instead of being a hard film, difficult to watch, with tragedy and sadness and pathos and affection, it comes out as ringing false and awkward; as being humanist, but devoid of any humanity.From the first images, one is assaulted by the fact that the camera is always forcing us to see something something. The first scene is the smuggling scene in which some Bedouin smugglers camp for their night before taking the girls up to Israel. At this point in time the girls are still unaware of their future fate (although the construction of the scene is such that one wonders how they could not know), and we witness the first scene of violence, a rape of one of the younger girls. The scene is filmed with an overused jittery camera style in order to impose a sort of 'realism' on the events. But this device being so overused (both in general and in his film), that it confers the exact opposite. His characters, the naïve victims of prostitution are poorly constructed as well. They seem to be nothing more that paper dolls which are mechanically and predictably moved in order to forward his particular ideology. Ringing particularly empty is the aging bordello mistress played by Hanna Schygulla, who tries half-heartedly to soften the plow of their entry into prostitution and offers only vacuous straw men arguments and explanations. This agenda of his to show us the ills of prostitution only results in giving the film a dry moralizing tone, and is illustrated by the trite linguistic and visual metaphors that the film is replete with. The title itself "Promised Land" (also the name of the bordello in which the girls will later be), is a good example of the heavy-handedness that will later guide the entire film. In one scene in which the girls are manhandled and then auctioned off becomes overbearing with its too obvious symbolism, and instead of making us identify with the characters, it in fact removes any possibility for pathos with them. The film is also pedantic visually. Instead of presenting the viewer with characters which we would later try to understand and perhaps even approach, Gitaï insists upon showing everything, most notably by limiting the frame of his camera to close ups of the body parts and faces of those he wants us to see. Unlike Yedaya's Mon Trésor, which presents us characters who skirt around the edge of the screen; who are human and tragic because of their very distance which we must try to cross as viewers, Gitaï's style of filming presents us with (unconvincing) prefabricated constructs. The essential visual flaw that resonates throughout the film, is the feeling that Gitaï has no confidence, or even a certain contempt for the viewers of his films, which is why he forces himself to show, where he should be permitting us to see and judge for ourselves.. On a linguistic level, the film is no better. When the girls are finally crossed over the border, there is a scene where they must shower and change for their induction into their lives as prostitutes. The muscle-bound black-clad mafiosos unconvincingly repeat "come on!" "Let's Go" "Fast", for no apparent reason other than to fit the male characters into their roles as the bad guys. Or, when the girls are on the back of a truck on the way to Haifa one of them peeks out and seeing a dirty, half destroyed city says "It looks like the city's under curfew. Oh There's a sign. It says Ramallah" To be of course later contrasted with when they later arrive in Israel, the land of their enslavement and looking at the nice hotels, she says "It's so nice and civilized." Gitaï presents a film about an important issue, but which is undone by his own preconceived ideological objective. Instead of being a hard film, difficult to watch, with tragedy and sadness and pathos and affection, it comes out as ringing false and awkward; as being humanist, but devoid of any humanity.
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