The inherent problems of bringing a work written for the stage to the screen are manifest here. Focusing on the World's most significant conflict, there's a very delicate line that filmmaker's have to walk to keep the audience in their seats so they'll listen-hopefully-to whatever the "other" side has to say, and we can all come out of the theater enlightened. This isn't a recreation of history, although the "back channel" depicted happened. This is a fiction that is balanced on the head of a pin so that both sides are wrong...and right. And to do that-remove the passion of both sides-you're left with what? Something lesser than the urgency of the problem the World faces.
Dialog on the stage is very different than what a screenplay needs. Moving this material required a full rewrite or you're left distracted by the question, "Do people really talk like that?" The best example is Toril Grandal's portrayal as the cook for the party who've been assembled. Both the actress and the role's conception come from a long tradition of comic French maids in the theater. It's embarrassing to watch but given the way the role is written and directed, the actress is left with little choice. On the stage, the distance a theater offers it may play better, but on a movie screen it's a disaster.
The one actor who is able to make this material seem less offensive and not a stereotyped construct is Salim Dau, as PLO's Ahmed Qurei. He walks away with the film, communicating the pain of the Palestinian experience with searing pathos.
Ruth Wilson too seems to find a quiet dignity as the person who brings the parties together and simply hopes peace will be the outcome. But everyone else screams, gesticulates, reaches for every trite stereotype at hand.
There's a brief newsreel that ends the film of the actual participants speaking and shaking hands. Those are the only honest moments in the film. And we're thrown back into reality of all that was lost as a result of these negotiations, and all that is still left to do. If the playwright/screenwriter wanted us to believe that it's outside World actors (the U. S. A., Moscow, and others) that are "the problem" and we just need to let the injured parties take a long walk in the snowy Norwegian Woods, we've since seen proof of how misguided that turned out to be.
For this specific material, a filmed stage production might have been the better choice.
Dialog on the stage is very different than what a screenplay needs. Moving this material required a full rewrite or you're left distracted by the question, "Do people really talk like that?" The best example is Toril Grandal's portrayal as the cook for the party who've been assembled. Both the actress and the role's conception come from a long tradition of comic French maids in the theater. It's embarrassing to watch but given the way the role is written and directed, the actress is left with little choice. On the stage, the distance a theater offers it may play better, but on a movie screen it's a disaster.
The one actor who is able to make this material seem less offensive and not a stereotyped construct is Salim Dau, as PLO's Ahmed Qurei. He walks away with the film, communicating the pain of the Palestinian experience with searing pathos.
Ruth Wilson too seems to find a quiet dignity as the person who brings the parties together and simply hopes peace will be the outcome. But everyone else screams, gesticulates, reaches for every trite stereotype at hand.
There's a brief newsreel that ends the film of the actual participants speaking and shaking hands. Those are the only honest moments in the film. And we're thrown back into reality of all that was lost as a result of these negotiations, and all that is still left to do. If the playwright/screenwriter wanted us to believe that it's outside World actors (the U. S. A., Moscow, and others) that are "the problem" and we just need to let the injured parties take a long walk in the snowy Norwegian Woods, we've since seen proof of how misguided that turned out to be.
For this specific material, a filmed stage production might have been the better choice.