Walking out of Omar at CIFF 2013, I didn’t think for a
second that the Palestinian film had the potential to be an Oscar contender. Overall,
the film worked for me. But not very well, I must add. It was engaging,
eventful, evenly paced, and cleverly plotted. However, it fails to entice, enthral
or reward the viewer emotionally.
Omar is part-time baker, full-time revolutionary. He scales
Israel-Palestine boundary walls every other day and almost gets shot. But Omar
treats it like just another day at the office. He belongs to a rebellion that
wants to take on armed forces and evict them out of the country despite being
vastly outnumbered. They consider themselves freedom fighters, going as far as
ambushing soldiers from a distance. But we never see what Omar gets from all of
this. His ideological stance on the war or people around him remains unknown.
All we know is that he belongs to a rebellion that provides him a sense of
group identity. Apparently, that is all it takes for Omar to risk his life
everyday and eventually go to war. Film-maker Hany Abu Assad doesn’t believe he
needs to show us what motivates Omar to live this daredevil life. That Omar lives
it stone-faced further confounds the viewer. He acts as if he has nothing to
lose, when in fact he’s shown to share a strong bond with his ever-smiling naivete lover
Nadia.
